REESE   LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 


BY 

GEORGE  WILLIAM  CURTIS 


NEW    YORK 

HARPER   &  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 
1895 


Copyright,  1894,  by  HARPER  &  BROTHERS. 
All  rights  reserved. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

EMERSON 1 

Homes  of  American  Authors,  1854. 

HAWTHORXE 31 

Homes  of  American  Authors,  1854. 

THE    WORKS    OF    NATHANIEL    HAWTHORNE  ...       61 

Xorth  American  Review,  Vol.  XCIX.,  1S64, 

RACHEL 95 

Putnam's  Magazine,  Vol.  VI.,  1855. 

THACKERAY    IN    AMERICA 127 

Putnam's  Magazine,  Vol.  L,  1S53. 

SIR    PHILIP    SIDNEY 147 

Hitherto  unpublished.     Written  in  1857. 

LONGFELLOW 181 

HARPERS  MAGAZINE,  Vol.  LXV.,  1882. 

OLIVER    WENDELL    HOLMES 205 

HARPER'S  MAGAZINE,  Vol.  LXXXIIL,  1891. 

WASHINGTON    IRVING 237 

Read  at  Ashfield,  1889.    Printed  by  the  Grolier 
Club,  1S92. 


EMERSON 


UNIVERSITY 


EMERSON 

THE  village  of  Concord,  Massachusetts,  lies  an 
hour's  ride  from  Boston,  upon  the  Great  North 
ern  Railway.  It  is  one  of  those  quiet  New  Eng 
land  towns,  whose  few  white  houses,  grouped 
upon  the  plain,  make  but  a  slight  impression 
upon  the  mind  of  the  busy  traveller  hurrying 
to  or  from  the  city.  As  the  conductor  shouts 
"  Concord  !"  the  busy  traveller  has  scarcely  time 
to  recall  "  Concord,  Lexington,  and  Bunker  Hill" 
before  the  town  has  vanished  and  he  is  darting 
through  woods  and  fields  as  solitary  as  those  he 
has  just  left  in  New  Hampshire.  Yet  as  it  van 
ishes  he  may  chance  to  "  see  "  two  or  three  spires, 
and  as  they  rush  behind  the  trees  his  eyes  fall 
upon  a  gleaming  sheet  of  water  It  is  Walden 
Pond — or  Walden  Water,  as  Orphic  Alcott  used 
to  call  it — whose  virgin  seclusion  was  a  just  im 
age  of  that  of  the  little  village,  until  one  after 
noon,  some  half-dozen  or  more  years  since,  a 
shriek,  sharper  than  any  that  had  rung  from  Wal 
den  woods  since  the  last  war-whoop  of  the  last 


4  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

Indians  of  Musketaquid,  announced  to  astonished 
Concord,  drowsing  in  the  river  meadows,  that  the 
nineteenth  century  had  overtaken  it.  Yet  long 
before  the  material  force  of  the  age  bound  the 
town  to  the  rest  of  the  world,  the  spiritual  force 
of  a  single  mind  in  it  had  attracted  attention  to 
it,  and  made  its  lonely  plains  as  dear  to  many 
widely  scattered  minds  as  the  groves  of  the  Acad 
emy  or  the  vineyards  of  Vaucluse. 

Except  in  causing  the  erection  of  the  railway 
buildings  and  several  dwellings  near  it,  steam  has 
not  much  changed  Concord.  It  is  yet  one  of  the 
quiet  country  towns  whose  charm  is  incredible  to 
all  but  those  who,  by  loving  it,  have  found  it  wor 
thy  of  love.  The  shire-town  of  the  great  agricult 
ural  county  of  Middlesex,  it  is  not  disturbed  by 
the  feverish  throb  of  factories,  nor  by  any  roar  of 
inexorable  toil  but  the  few  puffs  of  the  locomo 
tive.  One  day,  during  the  autumn,  it  is  thronged 
with  the  neighboring  farmers,  who  hold  their  high 
festival — the  annual  cattle-show — there.  But  the 
calm  tenor  of  Concord  life  is  not  varied,  even  on 
that  day,  by  anything  more  exciting  than  fat  oxen 
and  the  cud-chewing  eloquence  of  the  agricultural 
dinner.  The  population  of  the  region  is  composed 
of  sturdy,  sterling  men,  worthy  representatives 
of  the  ancestors  who  sowed  along  the  Concord 
shores,  with  their  seed-corn  and  rye,  the  germs 


4*?x 

UNIVERSITY) 

EXER80&.       .  A  5 


of  a  prodigious  national  greatness.  At  intervals 
every  day  the  rattle,  roar,  and  whistle  of  the  swift 
shuttle  darting  to  and  from  the  metropolitan  heart 
of  New  England,  weaving  prosperity  upon  the 
land,  remind  those  farmers  in  their  silent  fields 
that  the  great  world  yet  wags  and  wrestles.  And 
the  farmer-boy — sweeping  with  flashing  scythe 
through  the  river  meadows,  whose  coarse  grass 
glitters,  apt  for  mowing,  in  the  early  June  morn 
ing — pauses  as  the  whistle  dies  into  the  distance, 
and,  wiping  his  brow  and  whetting  his  blade  anew, 
questions  the  country-smitten  citizen,  the  amateur 
Corydon  struggling  with  imperfect  stroke  behind 
him,  of  the  mystic  romance  of  city  life. 

The  sluggish  repose  of  the  little  river  images 
the  fanner -boy's  life.  He  bullies  his  oxen,  and 
trembles  at  the  locomotive.  His  wonder  and  fan 
cy  stretch  towards  the  great  world  beyond  the 
barn -yard  and  the  village  church  as  the  torpid 
stream  tends  towards  the  ocean.  The  river,  in 
fact,  seems  the  thread  npon  which  all  the  beads 
of  that  rustic  life  are  strung — the  clew  to  its  tran 
quil  character.  If  it  were  an  impetuous  stream, 
dashing  along  as  if  it  claimed  and  required  the 
career  to  which  every  American  river  is  entitled, 
a  career  it  would  have.  Wheels,  factories,  shops, 
traders,  factory  -  girls,  boards  of  directors,  dreary 
white  lines  of  boarding-houses,  all  the  signs  that 


6  LITER  Alt?  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

indicate  the  spirit  of  the  age,  and  of  the  Amer 
ican  age,  would  arise  upon  its  margin.  Some 
shaven  magician  from  State  Street  would  run  up 
by  rail,  and,  from  proposals,  maps,  schedules  of 
stock,  etc.,  educe  a  spacious  factory  as  easily  as 
Aladdin's  palace  arose  from  nothing.  Instead  of 
a  dreaming,  pastoral  poet  of  a  village,  Concord 
would  be  a  rushing,  whirling,  bustling  manufact 
urer  of  a  town,  like  its  thrifty  neighbor  Lowell. 
Many  a  fine  equipage,  flashing  along  city  ways — 
many  an  Elizabethan-Gothic-Grecian  rural  retreat, 
in  which  State  Street  woos  Pan  and  grows  Arca 
dian  in  summer,  would  be  reduced,  in  the  last 
analysis,  to  the  Concord  mills.  Yet  if  these  broad 
river  meadows  grew  factories  instead  of  corn,  they 
might  perhaps  lack  another  harvest,  of  which  the 
poet's  thought  is  the  sickle. 

"One  harvest  from  your  field 

Homeward  brought  the  oxen  strong. 
Another  crop  your  acres  yield, 
Which  I  gather  in  a  song," 

sings  Emerson,  and  again,  as  the  afternoon  light 
strikes  pensive  across  his  memory,  as  over  the 
fields  below  him  : 

"Knows  he  who  tills  this  lonely  field, 

To  reap  its  scanty  corn, 
What  mystic  crops  his  acres  yield, 
At  midnight  and  at  morn  ?" 


EMERSON  7 

The  Concord  Kiver,  upon  whose  winding  shores 
the  town  has  scattered  its  few  houses — as  if,  loiter 
ing  over  the  plain  some  fervent  day,  it  had  fallen 
asleep  obedient  to  the  slumberous  spell,  and  had 
not  since  awakened — is  a  languid,  shallow  stream, 
that  loiters  through  broad  meadows,  which  fringe 
it  with  rushes  and  long  grasses.  Its  sluggish  cur 
rent  scarcely  moves  the  autumn  leaves  showered 
upon  it  by  a  few  maples  that  lean  over  the  Assa- 
bet  —  as  one  of  its  branches  is  named.  Yellow 
lily -buds  and  leathery  lily -pads  tessellate  its  sur 
face,  and  the  white  water-lilies  —  pale,  proud  La 
dies  of  Shalott — bare  their  virgin  breasts  to  the 
sun  in  the  seclusion  of  its  distant  reaches.  Clus 
tering  vines  of  wild  grape  hang  its  wooded  shores 
with  a  tapestry  of  the  South  and  the  Rhine.  The 
pickerel-weed  marks  with  blue  spikes  of  flowers 
the  points  where  small  tributary  brooks  flow  in, 
and  along  the  dusky  windings  of  those  brooks 
cardinal-flowers  with  a  scarlet  splendor  paint  the 
tropics  upon  New  England  green.  All  summer 
long,  from  founts  unknown,  in  the  upper  coun 
ties,  from  some  anonymous  pond  or  wooded  hill 
side  moist  with  springs,  steals  the  gentle  river 
through  the  plain,  spreading  at  one  point  above 
the  town  into  a  little  lake,  called  by  the  farmers 
"  Fairhaven  Bay,"  as  if  all  its  lesser  names  must 
share  the  sunny  significance  of  Concord.  Then, 


8  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

shrinking  again,  alarmed  at  its  own  boldness,  it 
dreams  on  towards  the  Merrimac  and  the  sea. 

The  absence  of  factories  has  already  implied  its 
shallowness  and  slowness.  In  truth  it  is  a  very 
slow  river,  belonging  much  more  to  the  Indian 
than  to  the  Yankee ;  so  much  so,  indeed,  that  until 
within  a  very  few  years  there  was  an  annual  visit 
to  its  shores  from  a  few  sad  heirs  of  its  old  mas 
ters,  who  pitched  a  group  of  tents  in  the  meadows, 
and  wove  their  tidy  baskets  and  strung  their  beads 
in  unsmiling  silence.  It  was  the  same  thing  that 
I  saw  in  Jerusalem  among  the  Jews.  Every  Fri 
day  they  repair  to  the  remains  of  the  old  temple 
wall,  and  pray  and  wail,  kneeling  upon  the  pave 
ment  and  kissing  the  stones.  But  that  passionate 
Oriental  regret  was  not  more  impressive  than  this 
silent  homage  of  a  waning  race,  who,  as  they  be 
held  the  unchanged  river,  knew  that,  unlike  it, 
the  last  drops  of  their  existence  were  gradually 
flowing  away,  and  that  for  their  tribes  there  shall 
be  no  ingathering. 

So  shallow  is  the  stream  that  the  amateur  Cory- 
dons  who  embark  at  morning  to  explore  its  re 
moter  shores  will,  not  infrequently  in  midsum 
mer,  find  their  boat  as  suddenly  tranquil  and 
motionless  as  the  river,  having  placidly  grounded 
upon  its  oozy  bottom.  Or,  returning  at  evening, 
they  may  lean  over  the  edge  as  they  lie  at  length 


EMERSON  9 

in  the  boat,  and  float  with  the  almost  impercepti 
ble  current,  brushing  the  tips  of  the  long  water- 
grass  and  reeds  below  them  in  the  stream — a  river 
jungle,  in  which  lurk  pickerel  and  trout — with 
the  sensation  of  a  bird  drifting  upon  soft  evening 
air  over  the  tree-tops.  No  available  or  profitable 
craft  navigate  these  waters,  and  animated  gentle 
men  from  the  city  who  run  up  for  "a  mouthful  of 
fresh  air"  cannot  possibly  detect  the  final  cause 
of  such  a  river.  Yet  the  dreaming  idler  has  a 
place  on  maps  and  a  name  in  history. 

Near  the  town  it  is  crossed  by  three  or  four 
bridges.  One  is  a  massive  structure  to  help  the 
railroad  over.  The  stern,  strong  pile  readily  be 
trays  that  it  is  part  of  good,  solid  stock,  owned  in 
the  right  quarter.  Close  by  it  is  a  little  arched 
stone  bridge,  auxiliary  to  a  great  road  leading  to 
some  vague  region  of  the  world  called  Acton  upon 
guide-posts  and  on  maps.  Just  beyond  these  bridges 
the  river  bends  and  forgets  the  railroad,  but  it  is 
grateful  to  the  graceful  arch  of  the  little  stone 
bridge  for  making  its  curve  more  picturesque, 
and,  as  it  muses  towards  the  Old  Manse,  listless 
ly  brushing  the  lilies,  it  wonders  if  Ellery  Chan- 
ning,  who  lives  beyond,  upon  a  hill-side  sloping 
to  the  shore,  wrote  his  poem  of  "  The  Bridge  " 
to  that  particular  one.  There  are  two  or  three 
wooden  bridges  also,  always  combining  well  with 

*  OF  THE 


UNIVERSITY 
CAUFORNIA- 


10  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

the  landscape,  always  making  and  suggesting  pict 
ures. 

The  Concord,  as  I  said,  has  a  name  in  history. 
Near  one  of  the  wooden  bridges  you  turn  aside 
from  the  main  road,  close  by  the  Old  Manse — 
whose  mosses  of  mystic  hue  were  gathered  by 
Hawthorne,  who  lived  there  for  three  years — and 
a  few  steps  bring  you  to  the  river  and  to  a  small 
monument  upon  its  brink.  It  is  a  narrow,  grassy 
way ;  not  a  field  nor  a  meadow,  but  of"  that  shape 
and  character  which  would  perplex  the  animated 
stranger  from  the  city,  who  would  see,  also,  its 
unfitness  for  a  building-lot.  The  narrow,  grassy 
way  is  the  old  road,  which  in  the  month  of  April, 
1775,  led  to  a  bridge  that  crossed  the  stream  at 
this  spot.  And  upon  the  river's  margin,  upon 
the  bridge  and  the  shore  beyond,  took  place  the 
sharp  struggle  between  the  Middlesex  farmers 
and  the  scarlet  British  soldiers  known  in  tradi 
tion  as  "  Concord  fight."  The  small  monument 
records  the  day  and  the  event.  When  it  was 
erected  Emerson  wrote  the  following  hymn  for 
the  ceremony : 

APRIL  19,  1836. 

"By  the  rude  bridge  that  arched  the  flood, 

Their  flag  to  April's  breeze  unfurled, 
Here  once  the  embattled  farmers  stood, 
And  fired  the  shot  heard  round  the  world. 


EMERSON  11 

"  The  foe  long  since  in  silence  slept ; 
Alike  the  conqueror  silent  sleeps; 
And  Time  the  ruined  bridge  has  swept 
Down  the  dark  stream  that  seaward  creeps. 

"On  this  green  bank,  by  this  soft  stream, 

We  see  to-day  a  votive  stone, 
That  memory  may  their  deed  redeem, 
When,  like  our  sires,  our  sons  are  gone. 

"Spirit  that  made  these  heroes  dare 

To  die,  or  leave  their  children  free, 
Bid  Time  and  Nature  gently  spare 
The  shaft  we  raise  to  them  and  Thee." 

Close  under  the  rough  stone  wall  at  the  left, 
which  separates  it  from  the  little  grassy  orchard 
of  the  Manse,  is  a  small  mound  of  turf  and  a 
broken  stone.  Grave  and  headstone  shrink  from 
sight  amid  the  grass  and  under  the  wall,  but 
they  mark  the  earthly  bed  of  the  first  victims 
of  that  first  fight.  A  few  large  trees  overhang 
the  ground,  which  Hawthorne  thinks  have  been, 
planted  since  that  day,  and  he  says  that  in  the 
river  he  has  seen  mossy  timbers  of  the  old  bridge, 
and  on  the  farther  bank,  half  hidden,  the  crum 
bling  stone  abutments  that  supported  it.  In  an 
old  house  upon  the  main  road,  nearly  opposite  the 
entrance  to  this  grassy  way,  I  knew  a  hale  old 
woman  who  well  remembered  the  gay  advance  of 
the  flashing  soldiers,  the  terrible  ring  and  crack 
of  fire-arras,  and  the  panic-stricken  retreat  of  the 


12  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

regulars,  blackened  and  bloody.  But  the  placid 
river  has  long  since  overborne  it  all.  The  alarm, 
the  struggle,  the  retreat,  are  swallowed  up  in  its 
supreme  tranquillity.  The  summers  of  more  than 
seventy  years  have  obliterated  every  trace  of  the 
road  with  thick  grass,  which  seeks  to  bury  the 
graves,  as  earth  buried  the  victims.  Let  the  sweet 
ministry  of  summer  avail.  Let  its  mild  iteration 
even  sap  the  monument  and  conceal  its  stones  as 
it  hides  the  abutment  in  foliage ;  for,  still  on  the 
sunny  slopes,  white  with  the  May  blossoming  of 
apple-orchards,  and  in  the  broad  fields,  golden  to 
the  marge  of  the  river,  and  tilled  in  security  and 
peace,  survives  the  imperishable  remembrance  of 
that  day  and  its  results. 

The  river  is  thus  the  main  feature  of  the  Con 
cord  landscape.  It  is  surrounded  by  a  wide  plain, 
from  which  rise  only  three  or  four  low  hills.  One 
is  a  wooded  cliff  over  Fairhaven  Bay,  a  mile  from 
the  town  ;  one  separates  the  main  river  from  the 
Assabeth ;  and  just  beyond  the  battle-ground  one 
rises,  rich  with  orchards,  to  a  fine  wood  which 
crowns  it.  The  river  meadows  blend  with  broad, 
lonely  fields.  A  wide  horizon,  like  that  of  the 
prairie  or  the  sea,  is  the  grand  charm  of  Concord. 
At  night  the  stars  are  seen  from  the  roads  cross 
ing  the  plain,  as  from  a  ship  at  sea.  The  land 
scape  would  be  called  tame  by  those  who  think  no 


EMERSON  .  13 

scenery  grand  but  that  of  mountains  or  the  sea- 
coast.  But  the  wide  solitude  of  that  region  is  not 
so  accounted  by  those  who  live  there.  To  them 
it  is  rich  and  suggestive,  as  Emerson  shows,  by 
saying  in  the  essay  upon  "Nature,"  "My  house 
stands  in  low  land,  with  limited  outlook,  and 
on  the  skirt  of  the  village.  But  I  go  with  my 
friend  to  the  shore  of  our  little  river,  and  with  one 
stroke  of  the  paddle  I  leave  the  village  politics 
and  personalities,  yes,  and  the  world  of  villages 
and  personalities  behind,  and  pass  into  a  delicate 
realm  of  sunset  and  moonlight,  too  bright  almost 
for  spotted  man  to  enter  without  novitiate  and 
probation.  We  penetrate  bodily  this  incredible 
beauty;  we  dip  our  hands  in  this  painted  element; 
our  eyes  are  bathed  in  these  lights  and  forms.  A 
holiday,  a  villeggiatura,  a  royal  revel,  the  proudest, 
most  heart-rejoicing  festival  that  valor  and  beauty, 
power  and  taste  ever  decked  and  enjoyed,  estab 
lishes  itself  upon  the  instant."  And  again,  as  in 
dicating  where  the  true  charm  of  scenery  lies : 
"  In  every  landscape  the  point  to  astonishment  is 
the  meeting  of  the  sky  and  the  earth,  and  that 
is  seen  from  the  first  hillock,  as  well  as  from 
the  top  of  the  Alleghanies.  The  stars  stoop 
down  over  the  brownest,  homeliest  common,  with 
all  the  spiritual  magnificence  which  they  shed 
on  the  Campagna  or  on  the  marble  deserts  of 


14  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

Egypt."  He  is  speaking  here,  of  course,  of  the 
spiritual  excitement  of  Beauty,  which  crops  up 
everywhere  in  nature,  like  gold  in  a  rich  re 
gion  ;  but  the  quality  of  the  imagery  indicates 
the  character  of  the  scenery  in  which  the  essay 
was  written. 

Concord  is  too  far  from  Boston  to  rival  in  gar 
den  cultivation  its  neighbors,  West  Cambridge, 
Lexington,  and  Waltham  ;  nor  can  it  boast,  with 
Brookline,  Dorchester,  and  Cambridge,  the  hand 
some  summer  homes  of  city  wealth.  But  it  sur 
passes  them  all,  perhaps,  in  a  genuine  country 
freshness  and  feeling,  derived  from  its  loneliness. 
If  not  touched  by  city  elegance,  neither  is  it  in 
fected  by  city  meretriciousness ;  it  is  sweet,  whole 
some  country.  By  climbing  one  of  the  hills,  your 
eye  sweeps  a  wide,  wide  landscape,  until  it  rests 
upon  graceful  Wachuset,  or,  farther  and  mistier, 
Monadnoc,  the  lofty  outpost  of  New  Hampshire 
hills.  Level  scenery  is  not  tame.  The  ocean,  the 
prairie,  the  desert,  are  not  tame,  although  of  mo 
notonous  surface.  The  gentle  undulations  which 
mark  certain  scenes  —  a  rippling  landscape,  in 
which  all  sense  of  space,  of  breadth,  and  of  height 
is  lost — that  is  tame.  It  may  be  made  beautiful 
by  exquisite  cultivation,  as  it  often  is  in  England 
and  on  parts  of  the  Hudson  shores,  but  it  is,  at 
best,  rather  pleasing  than  inspiring.  For  a  per- 


EMERSON 


manent  view  the  eye  craves  large  and  simple 
forms,  as  the  body  requires  plain  food  for  its  best 
nourishment. 

The  town  of  Concord  is  built  mainly  upon  one 
side  of  the  river.  In  its  centre  is  a  large  open 
square,  shaded  by  fine  elms.  A  white  wooden 
church,  in  the  most  classical  style  of  Yankee- 
Greek,  stands  upon  the  square.  The  Court-house 
is  upon  one  of  the  corners.  In  the  old  Court 
house,  in  the  days  when  I  knew  Concord,  many 
conventions  were  held  for  humane  as  well  as 
merely  political  objects.  One  summer  day  I  es 
pecially  remember,  when  I  did  not  envy  Athens 
its  forum,  for  Emerson  and  William  Henry 
Channing  spoke.  In  the  speech  of  both  burned 
the  sacred  fire  of  eloquence,  but  in  Emerson  it 
was  light,  and  in  Channing  heat. 

From  this  square  diverge  four  roads,  like  high 
ways  from  a  forum.  One  leads  by  the  Court- 
house  and  under  stately  sycamores  to  the  Old 
Manse  and  the  battle-ground,  another  goes  direct 
ly  to  the  river,  and  a  third  is  the  main  avenue 
of  the  town.  After  passing  the  shops  this  third 
divides,  and  one  branch  forms  a  fair  and  noble 
street,  spaciously  and  loftily  arched  with  elms, 
the  houses  standing  liberally  apart,  each  with  its 
garden-plot  in  front.  The  fourth  avenue  is  the 
old  Boston  road,  also  dividing,  at  the  edge  of  the 


16  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

village,  into  the  direct  route  to  the  metropolis  and 
the  Lexington  turnpike. 

The  house  of  Mr.  Emerson  stands  opposite  this 
junction.  It  is  a  plain,  square  white  dwelling- 
house,  yet  it  has  a  city  air  and  could  not  be  mis 
taken  for  a  farm-house.  A  quiet  merchant,  you 
would  say,  unostentatious  and  simple,  has  here 
hidden  himself  from  town.  But  a  thick  grove  of 
pine  and  fir  trees,  almost  brushing  the  two  win 
dows  upon  the  right  of  the  door,  and  occupying 
the  space  between  them  and  the  road,  suggests  at 
least  a  peculiar  taste  in  the  retired  merchant,  or 
hints  the  possibility  that  he  may  have  sold  his 
place  to  a  poet  or  philosopher — or  to  some  old 
East  India  sea-captain,  perhaps,  who  cannot  sleep 
without  the  sound  of  waves,  and  so  plants  pines  to 
rustle,  surf-like,  against  his  chamber  window. 

The  fact,  strangely  enough,  partly  supports  your 
theory.  In  the  year  1828  Charles  Coolidge,  a 
brother  of  J.  Templeman  Coolidge,  a  merchant  of 
repute  in  Boston  and  grandson  of  Joseph  Cool 
idge,  a  patriarchal  denizen  of  Bowdoin  Square  in 
that  city,  came  to  Concord  and  built  this  house. 
Gratefully  remembering  the  lofty  horse-chestnuts 
which  shaded  the  city  square,  and  which,  perhaps, 
first  inspired  him  with  the  wish  to  be  a  nearer 
neighbor  of  woods  and  fields,  he  planted  a  row  of 
them  along  his  lot,  which  this  year  ripen  their 


EMERSON  17 

twenty-fifth  harvest.  With  the  liberal  hospitality 
of  a  Xew  England  merchant  he  did  not  forget 
the  spacious  cellars  of  the  city,  and,  as  Mr.  Em 
erson  writes,  "he  built  the  only  good  cellar  that 
had  then  been  built  in  Concord." 

Mr.  Emerson  bought  the  house  in  the  year  1835. 
He  found  it  a  plain,  convenient,  and  thoroughly 
built  country  residence.  An  amiable  neighbor  of 
Mr.  Coolidge  had  placed  a  miserable  old  barn  ir 
regularly  upon  the  edge  of  that  gentleman's  lot, 
which,  for  the  sake  of  comeliness,  he  was  forced  to 
buy  and  set  straight  and  smooth  into  a  decent  de 
pendence  of  the  mansion  house.  The  estate,  upon 
passing  into  Mr.  Emerson's  hands,  comprised  the 
house,  barn,  and  two  acres  of  land.  He  has  en 
larged  house  and  barn,  and  the  two  acres  have 
grown  to  nine.  Our  author  is  no  farmer,  except 
as  every  country  gentleman  is,  yet  the  kindly 
slope  from  the  rear  of  the  house  to  a  little  brook, 
which,  passing  to  the  calm  Concord  beyond,  washes 
the  edge  of  his  land,  yields  him  at  least  occasional 
beans  and  pease — or  some  friend,  agriculturally  en 
thusiastic  and  an  original  Brook-Farmer,  experi 
ments  with  guano  in  the  garden,  and  produces  mel 
ons  and  other  vines  with  a  success  that  relieves 
Brook  Farm  from  every  slur  of  inadequate  practi 
cal  genius.  Mr.  Emerson  has  shaded  his  originally 
bare  land  with  trees,  and  counts  near  a  hundred 
2 


1 8  LITERAR  Y  AND  SO  CIAL  ESS  A  YS 

apple  and  pear  trees  in  his  orchard.  The  whole 
estate  is  quite  level,  inclining  only  towards  the 
little  brook,  and  is  well  watered  and  convenient. 

The  Orphic  Alcott — or  Plato  Skimpole,  as  As- 
pasia  called  him — well  known  in  the  transcen 
dental  history  of  New  England,  designed  and  with 
his  own  hands  erected  a  summer-house,  which 
gracefully  adorns  the  lawn,  if  I  may  so  call  the 
smooth  grass-plot  at  the  side  of  the  house.  Un 
happily,  this  edifice  promises  no  longer  duration, 
not  being  "  technically  based  and  pointed."  This 
is  not  a  strange,  although  a  disagreeable  fact,  to 
Mr.  Emerson,  who  has  been  always  the  most  faith 
ful  and  appreciative  of  the  lovers  of  Mr.  Alcott. 
It  is  natural  that  the  Orphic  Alcott  should  build 
graceful  summer-houses.  There  are  even  people 
who  declare  that  he  has  covered  the  pleasant  but 
somewhat  misty  lawns  of  ethical  speculation  with 
a  thousand  such  edifices,  which  need  only  to  be  a 
little  more  "  technically  based  and  pointed  "  to  be 
quite  perfect.  At  present  they  whisper,  the  wind 
blows  clean  through  them,  and  no  figures  of  flesh 
and  blood  are  ever  seen  there,  but  only  pallid 
phantoms  with  large,  calm  eyes,  eating  uncooked 
grain,  out  of  baskets,  and  discoursing  in  a  sublime 
shibboleth  of  which  mortals  have  no  key.  But 
how  could  Plato  Skimpole,  who  goes  down  to 
Hiugham  on  the  sea,  in  a  New  England  January, 


EJ1ERSON  19 

clad  only  in  a  suit  of  linen,  hope  to  build  immor 
tal  summer-houses? 

Mr.  Emerson's  library  is  the  room  at  the  right 
of  the  door  upon  entering  the  house.  It  is  a  sim 
ple  square  room,  not  walled  with  books  like  the 
den  of  a  literary  grub,  nor  merely  elegant  like  the 
ornamental  retreat  of  a  dilettante.  The  books  are 
arranged  upon  plain  shelves,  not  in  architectural 
bookcases,  and  the  room  is  hung  with  a  few  choice 
engravings  of  the  greatest  men.  There  was  a  fair 
copy  of  Michael  Angelo's  "  Fates,"  which,  prop 
erly  enough,  imparted  that  grave  serenity  to  the 
ornament  of  the  room  which  is  always  apparent 
in  what  is  written  there.  It  is  the  study  of  a 
scholar.  All  our  author's  published  writings,  the 
essays,  orations,  and  poems,  date  from  this  room, 
as  much  as  they  date  from  any  place  or  moment. 
The  villagers,  indeed,  fancy  their  philosophical 
contemporary  affected  by  the  novelist  James's  con 
stancy  of  composition.  They  relate,  with  wide 
eyes,  that  he  has  a  huge  manuscript  book,  in  which 
he  incessantly  records  the  ends  of  thoughts,  bits 
of  observation  and  experience,  and  facts  of  all 
kinds — a  kind  of  intellectual  and  scientific  rag 
bag,  into  which  all  shreds  and  remnants  of  con 
versations  and  reminiscences  of  wayside  reveries 
are  incontinently  thrust.  This  work  goes  on,  they 
aver,  day  and  night,  and  when  he  travels  the  rag- 


20  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

bag  travels  too,  and  grows  more  plethoric  with 
each  mile  of  the  journey.  And  a  story,  which 
will  one  day  be  a  tradition,  is  perpetuated  in  the 
village,  that  one  night,  before  his  wife  had  become 
completely  accustomed  to  his  habits,  she  awoke 
suddenly,  and  hearing  him  groping  about  the  room, 
inquired  anxiously, 

"  My  dear,  are  you  unwell  ?" 

"  No,  my  love,  only  an  idea." 

The  library  is  not  only  the  study  of  a  scholar, 
it  is  the  bower  of  a  poet.  The  pines  lean  against 
the  windows,  and  to  the  student  deeply  sunk  in 
learned  lore  or  soaring  upon  the  daring  specula 
tions  of  an  intrepid  philosophy,  they  whisper  a 
secret  beyond  that  of  the  philosopher's  stone,  and 
sing  of  the  springs  of  poetry. 

The  site  of  the  house  is  not  memorable.  There 
is  no  reasonable  ground  to  suppose  that  so  much 
as  an  Indian  wigwam  ever  occupied  the  spot ;  nor 
has  Henry  Thoreau,  a  very  faithful  friend  of  Mr. 
Emerson's  and  of  the  woods  and  waters  of  his 
native  Concord,  ever  found  an  Indian  arrowhead 
upon  the  premises.  Henry  Thoreau's  instinct  is 
as  sure  towards  the  facts  of  nature  as  the  witch- 
hazel  towards  treasure.  If  every  quiet  country 
town  in  New  England  had  a  son  who,  with  a 
lore  like  Selborne's  and  an  eye  like  Buffon's,  had 
watched  and  studied  its  landscape  and  history,  and 


EXERSON  21 

then  published  the  result,  as  Thoreau  has  done,  in 
a  book  as  redolent  of  genuine  and  perceptive  sym 
pathy  with  nature  as  a  clover-field  of  honey,  New 
England  would  seem  as  poetic  and  beautiful  as 
Greece.  Thoreau  lives  in  the  berry  pastures  upon 
a  bank  over  Walden  Pond,  and  in  a  little  house 
of  his  own  building.  One  pleasant  summer  after 
noon  a  small  party  of  us  helped  him  raise  it — a  bit 
of  life  as  Arcadian  as  any  at  Brook  Farm.  Else 
where  in  the  village  he  turns  up  arrowheads  abun 
dantly,  and  Hawthorne  mentions  that  Thoreau 
initiated  him  into  the  mystery  of  finding  them. 
But  neither  the  Indians  nor  nature  nor  Thoreau 
can  invest  the  quiet  residence  of  our  author  with 
the  dignity  or  even  the  suspicion  of  a  legend. 
History  stops  short  in  that  direction  with  Charles 
Coolidge,  Esq.,  and  the  year  1828. 

There  is  little  prospect  from  the  house.  Di 
rectly  opposite  a  low  bluff  overhangs  the  Boston 
road  and  obstructs  the  view.  Upon  the  other  sides 
the  level  land  stretches  away.  Towards  Lexing 
ton  it  is  a  broad,  half-marshy  region,  and  between 
the  brook  behind  and  the  river  good  farms  lie 
upon  the  outskirts  of  the  town.  Pilgrims  drawn 
to  Concord  by  the  desire  of  conversing  with  the 
man  whose  written  or  spoken  eloquence  has  so 
profoundly  charmed  them,  and  who  have  placed 
him  in  some  pavilion  of  fancy,  some  peculiar  resi- 


22  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

dence,  find  him  in  no  porch  of  philosophy  nor  aca 
demic  grove,  but  in  a  plain  white  house  by  the 
wayside,  ready  to  entertain  every  comer  as  an  am 
bassador  from  some  remote  Cathay  of  speculation 
whence  the  stars  are  more  nearly  seen.  Bat  the 
familiar  reader  of  our  author  will  not  be  surprised 
to  find  the  "walking  eye-ball"  simply  sheltered, 
and  the  "  endless  experimenter  with  no  past  at  my 
back"  housed  without  ornament.  Such  a  reader 
will  have  felt  the  Spartan  severity  of  this  intel 
lect,  arid  have  noticed  that  the  realm  of  this  imag 
ination  is  rather  sculpturesque  than  pictorial,  more 
Greek  than  Italian.  Therefore  he  will  be  pleased 
to  alight  at  the  little  gate,  and  hear  the  breezy 
welcome  of  the  pines  and  the  no  less  cordial  salu 
tation  of  their  owner.  For  if  the  visitor  knows 
what  he  is  about,  he  has  come  to  this  plain  for 
bracing  mountain  air.  These  serious  Concord 
reaches  are  no  vale  of  Cashmere.  Where  Plato 
Skimpole  is  architect  of  the  summer-house,  you 
may  imagine  what  is  to  be  expected  in  the  man 
sion  itself.  It  is  always  morning  within  those 
doors.  If  you  have  nothing  to  say,  if  you  are 
really  not  an  envoy  from  some  kingdom  or  colony 
of  thought  and  cannot  cast  a  gem  upon  the  heaped 
pile,  you  had  better  pass  by  upon  the  other  side. 
For  it  is  the  peculiarity  of  Emerson's  mind  to  be 
always  on  the  alert.  He  eats  no  lotus,  but  for- 


EMERSON  23 

ever  quaffs  the  waters  which  engender  immortal 
thirst. 

If  the  memorabilia  of  his  house  could  find  their 
proper  Xenophon,  the  want  of  antecedent  arrow 
heads  upon  the  premises  would  not  prove  very 
disastrous  to  the  interest  of  the  history.  The  fame 
of  the  philosopher  attracts  admiring  friends  and 
enthusiasts  from  every  quarter,  and  the  scholarly 
grace  and  urbane  hospitality  of  the  gentleman 
send  them  charmed  away.  Friendly  foes,  who 
altogether  differ  from  Emerson,  come  to  break  a 
lance  with  him  upon  the  level  pastures  of  Con 
cord,  with  all  the  cheerful  and  appreciative  zeal 
of  those  who  longed 

"To  drink  delight  of  battle  witn  their  peers 
Far  on  the  ringing  plains  of  windy  Troy." 

It  is  not  hazardous  to  say  that  the  greatest  ques 
tions  of  our  day  and  of  all  days  have  been  no 
where  more  amply  discussed,  with  more  poetic 
insight  or  profound  conviction,  than  in  the  comely, 
square  white  house  upon  the  edge  of  the  Lexing 
ton  turnpike.  There  have  even  been  attempts 
at  something  more  formal  and  club-like  than  the 
chance  conversations  of  occasional  guests,  one  of 
which  will  certainly  be  nowhere  recorded  but  upon 
these  pages. 

It  was  in  the  year  1845  that  a  circle  of  persons 


24  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

of  various  ages,  and  differing  very  much  in  every 
thing  but  sympathy,  found  themselves  in  Concord. 
Towards  the  end  of  the  autumn  Mr.  Emerson  sug 
gested  that  they  should  meet  every  Monday  even 
ing  through  the  winter  in  his  library.  "  Monsieur 
Aubepine,"  "Miles  Coverdale,"  and  other  phan 
toms,  since  generally  known  as  Nathaniel  Haw 
thorne,  who  then  occupied  the  Old  Manse ;  the 
inflexible  Henry  Thoreau,  a  scholastic  and  pas 
toral  Orson,  then  living  among  the  blackberry 
pastures  of  Walden  Pond;  Plato  Skimpole,  then 
sublimely  meditating  impossible  summer-houses 
in  a  little  house  upon  the  Boston  road ;  the  en 
thusiastic  agriculturist  and  Brook-Farmer  already 
mentioned,  then  an  inmate  of  Mr.  Emerson's 
house,  who  added  the  genial  cultivation  of  a 
scholar  to  the  amenities  of  the  natural  gentle 
man ;  a  sturdy  farmer  neighbor,  who  had  brave 
ly  fought  his  weary  way  through  inherited  em 
barrassments  to  the  small  success  of  a  New  Eng 
land  husbandman,  and  whose  faithful  wife  had 
seven  times  merited  well  of  her  county  ;  two  city 
youths,  ready  for  the  fragments  from  the  feast  of 
wit  and  wisdom ;  and  the  host  himself,  composed 
this  club.  Ellery  Channing,  who  had  that  winter 
harnessed  his  Pegasus  to  the  New  York  Tribune, 
was  a  kind  of  corresponding  member.  The  news 
of  this  world  was  to  be  transmitted  through  his 


EMERSON  25 

eminently  practical  genius,  as  the  club  deemed  it 
self  competent  to  take  charge  of  tidings  from  all 
other  spheres. 

I  went,  the  first  Monday  evening,  very  much 
as  Ixion  may  have  gone  to  his  banquet.  The  phi 
losophers  sat  dignified  and  erect.  There  was  a  con 
strained  but  very  amiable  silence,  which  had  the 
impertinence  of  a  tacit  inquiry,  seeming  to  ask, 
"  Who  will  now  proceed  to  say  the  finest  thing 
that  has  ever  been  said  ?"  It  was  quite  involun 
tary  and  unavoidable,  for  the  members  lacked  that 
fluent  social  genius  without  which  a  club  is  impos 
sible.  It  was  a  congress  of  oracles  on  the  one 
hand,  and  of  curious  listeners  upon  the  other.  I 
vaguely  remember  that  the  Orphic  Alcott  invaded 
the  Sahara  of  silence  with  a  solemn  "  saying,"  to 
which,  after  due  pause,  the  honorable  member  for 
blackberry  pastures  responded  by  some  keen  and 
graphic  observation  ;  while  the  Olympian  host, 
anxious  that  so  much  good  material  should  be 
spun  into  something,  beamed  smiling  encourage 
ment  upon  all  parties.  But  the  conversation  be 
came  more  and  more  staccato.  Miles  Coverdale,  a 
statue  of  night  and  silence,  sat,  a  little  removed, 
under  a  portrait  of  Dante,  gazing  imperturbably 
upon  the  group;  and  as  he  sat  in  the  shadow,  his 
dark  hair  and  eyes  and  suit  of  sables  made  him,  in 

that  society,  the  black  thread  <&f  mastery  which  he 
*»  .S£  rlB 


OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 


26  LITEEAEY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

weaves  into  his  stories,  while  the  shifting  presence 
of  the  Brook-Farmer  played  like  heat-lightning 
around  the  room. 

I  recall  little  else  but  a  grave  eating  of  russet 
apples  by  the  erect  philosophers,  and  a  solemn 
disappearance  into  night.  The  club  struggled 
through  three  Monday  evenings.  Plato  was  per 
petually  putting  apples  of  gold  in  pictures  of  sil 
ver;  for  such  was  the  rich  ore  of  his  thoughts, 
coined  by  the  deep  melody  of  his  voice.  Orson 
charmed  us  with  the  secrets  won  from  his  inter 
views  with  Pan  in  the  Walden  woods ;  while 
Emerson,  with  the  zeal  of  an  engineer  trying  to 
dam  wild  waters,  sought  to  bind  the  wide-flying 
embroidery  of  discourse  into  a  web  of  clear  sweet 
sense.  But  still  in  vain.  The  oracular  sayings 
were  the  unalloyed  saccharine  element;  and  every 
chemist  knows  how  much  else  goes  to  practical 
food — how  much  coarse,  rough,  woody  fibre  is 
essential.  The  club  struggled  on  valiantly,  dis 
coursing  celestially,  eating  apples,  and  disappearing 
in  the  dark,  until  the  third  evening  it  vanished 
altogether.  But  I  have  since  known  clubs  of  fifty 
times  its  number,  whose  collective  genius  was  not 
more  than  that  of  either  one  of  the  Dii  Majores 
of  our  Concord  coterie.  The  fault  was  its  too 
great  concentration.  It  was  not  relaxation,  as  a 
club  should  be,  but  tension.  Society  is  a  play,  a 


EMERSON  27 

game,  a  tournament  ;  not  a  battle.  It  is  the  easy 
grace  of  undress  ;  not  an  intellectual  full-dress 
parade. 

I  have  already  hinted  this  unbending  intellect 
ual  alacrity  of  our  author.  His  sport  is  serious  — 
his  humor  is  earnest.  He  stands  like  a  sentinel. 
His  look  and  manner  and  habit  of  thought  cry 
"  Who  goes  there  ?"  and  if  he  does  not  hear  the 
countersign,  he  brings  the  intruder  to  a  halt.  It  is 
for  this  surprising  fidelity  and  integrity  that  his 
influence  has  been  so  deep  and  sure  and  perma 
nent  upon  the  intellectual  life  of  the  young  men  of 
Xew  England  ;  and  of  old  England,  too,  where,  in 
Manchester,  there  were  regular  weekly  meetings 
at  which  his  works  were  read.  What  he  said  long 
ago  in  his  preface  to  the  American  edition  of 
Carlyle's  Miscellanies,  that  they  were  papers  which 
had  spoken  to  the  young  men  of  the  time  "  with 
an  emphasis  that  hindered  them  from  sleep,"  is 
strikingly  true  of  his  own  writings.  His  first 
slim,  anonymous  duodecimo,  Nature,  was  as  fair 
and  fascinating  to  the  royal  young  minds  who 
met  it  in  the  course  of  their  reading,  as  Egeria  to 


wandering  in  the  grove.  The  essays,  ora 
tions,  and  poems  followed,  developing  and  elabo 
rating  the  same  spiritual  and  heroic  philosophy, 
applying  it  to  life,  history,  and  literature,  with  a 
vigor  and  richness  so  supreme  that  not  only  do 


28  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

many  account  him  our  truest  philosopher,  but 
others  acknowledge  him  as  our  most  characteristic 
poet. 

It  would  be  a  curious  inquiry  how  much  and 
what  kind  of  influence  the  placid  scenery  of  Con 
cord  has  exercised  upon  his  mind.  "  I  chide  so 
ciety,  I  embrace  solitude,"  he  says ;  "  and  yet  I  am 
not  so  ungrateful  as  not  to  see  the  wise,  the  lovely, 
and  the  noble-minded,  as  from  time  to  time  they 
pass  my  gate."  It  is  not  difficult  to  understand 
his  fondness  for  the  spot.  He  has  been  always 
familiar  with  it,  always  more  or  less  a  resident  of 
the  village.  Born  in  Boston  upon  the  spot  where 
the  Chauncey  Place  Church  now  stands,  part  of 
his  youth  was  passed  in  the  Old  Manse,  which  was 
built  by  his  grandfather  and  in  which  his  father 
was  born ;  and  there  he  wrote  Nature.  From 
the  magnificent  admiration  of  ancestral  England 
he  was  glad  to  return  two  years  since  to  quiet 
Concord  and  to  acres  which  will  not  yield  a  sin 
gle  arrowhead.  The  Swiss  sigh  for  their  moun 
tains;  but  the  Nubians,  also,  pine  for  their  des 
ert  plains.  Those  who  are  born  by  the  sea  long 
annually  to  return  and  to  rest  their  eyes  upon  its 
living  horizon.  Is  it  because  the  earliest  impres 
sions,  made  when  the  mind  is  most  plastic,  are 
most  durable?  or  because  youth  is  that  golden 
age  bounding  the  confines  of  memory  and  floating 


EXERSON  29 

forever — an  alluring  mirage  as  we  recede  farther 
from  it  ? 

The  imagination  of  the  man  who  roams  the 
solitary  pastures  of  Concord,  or  floats,  dreaming, 
down  its  river,  will  easily  see  its  landscape  upon 
Emerson's  pages.  "  That  country  is  fairest,"  he 
says,  "  which  is  inhabited  by  the  noblest  minds." 
And  although  that  idler  upon  the  river  may  have 
leaned  over  the  Mediterranean  from  Genoese  and 
Neapolitan  villas,  or  have  glanced  down  the  steep 
green  valley  of  Sicilian  Enna,  seeking  "  herself 
the  fairest  flower,"  or  walked  the  shores  where 
Cleopatra  and  Helen  walked,  yet  the  charm  of  a 
landscape  which  is  felt  rather  than  seen  will  be 
imperishable.  "  Travelling  is  a  fool's  paradise," 
says  Emerson.  But  he  passed  its  gates  to  learn 
that  lesson.  His  writings,  however,  have  no  im 
ported  air.  If  there  be  something  Oriental  in  his 
philosophy  and  tropical  in  his  imagination,  they 
have  yet  the  strong  flavor  of  his  mother  earth — 
the  uuderived  sweetness  of  the  open  Concord  sky, 
and  the  spacious  breadth  of  the  Concord  horizon. 


HAWTHORNE 


HAWTHORNE 

HAWTHORNE  has  himself  drawn  the  picture  of 
the  Old  Manse  in  Concord.  He  has  given  to  it 
that  quiet  richness  of  coloring  which  ideally  be 
longs  to  an  old  country  mansion.  It  seemed  so 
fitting  a  residence  for  one  who  loves  to  explore  the 
twilight  of  antiquity — and  the  gloomier  the  better 
— that  the  visitor,  among  the  felicities  of  whose 
life  was  included  the  freedom  of  the  Manse,  could 
not  but  fancy  that  our  author's  eyes  first  saw  the 
daylight  enchanted  by  the  slumberous  orchard  be 
hind  the  house,  or  tranquillized  into  twilight  by 
the  spacious  avenue  -in  front.  The  character  of 
his  imagination,  and  the  golden  gloom  of  its  blos 
soming,  completely  harmonize  with  the  rusty, 
gable- roofed  old  house  upon  the  river -side,  and 
the  reader  of  his  books  would  be  sure  that  his 
boyhood  and  youth  knew  no  other  friends  than 
the  dreaming  river  and  the  melancholy  meadows 
and  drooping  foliage  of  its  vicinity. 

Since  the  reader,  however,  would  greatly  mis 
take  if  he  fancied  this,  in  good  sooth,  the  ancestral 


34  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

halls  of  the  Hawthornes — the  genuine  Hawthorne- 
den — he  will  be  glad  to  save  the  credit  of  his 
fancy  by  learning  that  it  was  here  our  author's 
bridal  tour — which  commenced  in  Boston,  then 
three  hours  away — ended,  and  his  married  life  be 
gan.  Here,  also,  his  first  child  was  born,  and  here 
those  sad  and  silver  mosses  accumulated  upon  his 
fancy,  from  which  he  heaped  so  soft  a  bed  for  our 
dreaming.  "  Between  two  tall  gate-posts  of  rough 
hewn  stone  (the  gate  itself  having  fallen  from  its 
hinges  at  some  unknown  epoch)  we  beheld  the 
gray  front  of  the  old  parsonage,  terminating  the 
vista  of  an  avenue  of  black -ash  trees."  It  was  a 
pleasant  spring  day  in  the  year  1843,  and  as  they 
entered  the  house  nosegays  of  fresh  flowers,  ar 
ranged  by  friendly  hands,  welcomed  them  to  Con 
cord  and  summer. 

The  dark-haired  man,  who  led  his  wife  along 
the  avenue  that  afternoon,  had  been  recently  an 
officer  of  the  customs  in  Boston,  before  which  he 
had  led  a  solitary  life  in  Salem.  Graduated  with 
Longfellow  at  Bowdoin  College,  in  Maine,  he  had 
lived  a  hermit  in  respectable  Salem,  an  absolute 
recluse  even  from  his  own  family,  walking  out 
by  night  and  writing  wild  tales  by  day,  most  of 
which  were  burnt  in  his  bachelor  fire,  and  some  of 
which,  in  newspapers,  magazines,  and  annuals,  led  a 
wandering,  uncertain,  and  mostly  unnoticed  life. 


HAWTHORNE  35 

Those  tales  among  this  class  which  were  attain- 

O 

able  he  collected  into  a  small  volume,  and  appriz 
ing  the  world  that  they  were  "  twice-told,"  sent 
them  forth  anew  to  make  their  own  way,  in  the 
year  1S41.  But  he  piped  to  the  world,  and  it  did 
not  sing.  He  wept  to  it,  and  it  did  not  inourn. 
The  book,  however,  as  all  good  books  do,  made  its 
way  into  various  hearts.  Yet  the  few  penetrant 
minds  which  recognized  a  remarkable  power  and  a 
method  of  strange  fascination  in  the  stones  did 
not  make  the  public  nor  influence  the  public  mind. 
"I  was,"  he  says  in  the  last  edition  of  these  tales, 
"  the  most  unknown  author  in  America."  Full 
of  glancing  wit,  of  tender  satire,  of  exquisite  nat 
ural  description,  of  subtle  and  strange  analysis  of 
human  life,  darkly  passionate  and  weird,  they  yet 
floated  unhailed  barks  upon  the  sea  of  publicity 
— unhailed,  but  laden  and  gleaming  at  every  crev 
ice  with  the  true  treasure  of  Cathay.  Bancroft, 
then  Collector  in  Boston,  prompt  to  recognize  and 
to  honor  talent,  made  the  dreaming  story-teller  a 
surveyor  in  the  custom-house,  thus  opening  to 
him  a  new  range  of  experience.  From  the  soci 
ety  of  phantoms  he  stepped  upon  Long  Wharf 
and  plumply  confronted  Captain  Cuttle  and  Dirk 
Hatteraick.  It  was  no  less  romance  to  our  author. 
There  is  no  greater  error  of  those  who  are  called 
"  practical  men  "  than  the  supposition  that  life  is, 


36  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

or  can  be,  other  than  a  dream  to  a  dreamer.  Shut 
him  up  in  a  counting-room,  barricade  him  with 
bales  of  merchandise,  and  limit  his  library  to  the 
ledger  and  cash-book  and  his  prospect  to  the  neigh 
boring  signs ;  talk  "  Bills  receivable  "  and  "  Sun 
dries  Dr.  to  cash"  to  him  forever,  and  you  are 
only  a  very  amusing  or  very  annoying  phantom  to 
him.  The  merchant-prince  might  as  well  hope  to 
make  himself  a  poet,  as  the  poet  a  practical  or 
practicable  man.  He  has  laws  to  obey  not  at  all 
the  less  stringent  because  men  of  a  different  tem 
perament  refuse  to  acknowledge  them,  and  he  is 
held  to  a  loyalty  quite  beyond  their  conception. 

So  Captain  Cuttle  and  Dirk  Hatteraick  were  as 
pleasant  figures  to  our  author  in  the  picture  of  life 
as  any  others.  He  went  daily  upon  the  vessels, 
looked  and  listened  and  learned,  was  a  favorite 
of  the  sailors  as  such  men  always  are,  did  his 
work  faithfully,  and,  having  dreamed  his  dream 
upon  Long  Wharf,  was  married  and  slipped  up  to 
the  Old  Manse  and  a  new  chapter  in  the  romance. 
It  opened  in  "the  most  delightful  little  nook  of 
a  study  that  ever  offered  its  snug  seclusion  to  a 
scholar."  Of  the  three  years  in  the  Old  Manse 
the  prelude  to  the  Mosses  is  the  most  perfect  his 
tory,  and  of  the  quality  of  those  years  the  Moss 
es  themselves  are  sufficient  proof.  They  were 
mostly  written  in  the  little  study,  and  originally 


HAWTHORNE  37 

published  in  the  Democratic  Review,  then  edited 
by  Hawthorne's  friend  O'Sullivan. 

To  the  inhabitants  of  Concord,  however,  our 
author  was  as  much  a  phantom  and  a  fable  as  the 
old  pastor  of  the  parish,  dead  half  a  century  be 
fore,  and  whose  faded  portrait  in  the  attic  was 
gradually  rejoining  its  original  in  native  dust. 
The  gate,  fallen  from  its  hinges  in  a  remote  antiq 
uity,  was  never  rehung.  "The  wheel -track  lead 
ing  to  the  door"  remained  still  overgrown  with 
grass.  Ko  bold  villager  ever  invaded  the  sleep  of 
"the  glimmering  shadows"  in  the  avenue.  At 
evening  no  lights  gleamed  from  the  windows. 
Scarce  once  in  many  months  did  the  single  old 
knobby-faced  coachman  at  the  railroad  bring  a 
fare  to  "Mr.  Hawthorne's."  "Is  there  anybody 
in  the  old  house?"  sobbed  the  old  ladies  in  de 
spair,  imbibing  tea  of  a  livid  green.  That  knocker, 
which  everybody  had  enjoyed  the  right  of  lifting 
to  summon  the  good  old  pastor,  no  temerity  now 
dared  to  touch.  Heavens !  what  if  the  figure  in 
the  mouldy  portrait  should  peer,  in  answer,  over 
the  eaves,  and  shake  solemnly  its  decaying  sur 
plice  !  Kay,  what  if  the  mysterious  man  himself 
should  answer  the  summons  and  come  to  the  door ! 
It  is  easy  to  summon  spirits — but  if  they  come  ? 
Collective  Concord,  moving  in  the  river  mead 
ows,  embraced  the  better  part  of  valor  and  left  the 


38  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

knocker  untouched.  A  cloud  of  romance  sud 
denly  fell  out  of  the  heaven  of  fancy  and  envel 
oped  the  Old  Manse : 

"  In  among  the  bearded  barley 
The  reaper  reaping  late  and  early" 

did  not  glance  more  wistfully  towards  the  island 
of  Shalott  and  its  mysterious  lady  than  the  reapers 
of  Concord  rye  looked  at  the  Old  Manse  and  won 
dered  over  its  inmate. 

Sometimes  in  the  forenoon  a  darkly  clad  figure 
was  seen  in  the  little  garden-plot  putting  in  corn 
or  melon  seed,  and  gravely  hoeing.  It  was  a  brief 
apparition.  The  farmer  passing  towards  town  and 
seeing  the  solitary  cultivator,  lost  his  faith  in  the 
fact  and  believed  he  had  dreamed  when,  upon  re 
turning,  he  saw  no  sign  of  life,  except,  possibly, 
upon  some  Monday,  the  ghostly  skirt  of  a  shirt 
flapping  spectrally  in  the  distant  orchard.  Day 
dawned  and  darkened  over  the  lonely  house. 
Summer  with  "buds  and  bird-voices"  came  sing 
ing  in  from  the  South,  and  clad  the  old  ash-trees 
in  deeper  green,  the  Old  Manse  in  profounder 
mystery.  Gorgeous  autumn  came  to  visit  the 
story-teller  in  his  little  western  study,  and,  depart 
ing,  wept  rainbows  among  his  trees.  Winter  im 
patiently  swept  down  the  hill  opposite,  rifling  the 
trees  of  each  last  clinging  bit  of  summer,  as  if 


HAWTHORNE  39 

thrusting  aside  opposing  barriers  and  determined 
to  search  the  mystery.  But  his  white  robes  float 
ed  around  the  Old  Manse,  ghostly  as  the  decaying 
surplice  of  the  old  pastor's  portrait,  and  in  the 
snowy  seclusion  of  winter  the  mystery  was  as 
mysterious  as  ever. 

Occasionally  Emerson  or  Ellery  Channing  or 
Henry  Thoreau  —  some  poet,  as  once  Whittier, 
journeying  to  the  Merrimac,  or  an  old  Brook- 
Farmer  who  remembered  Miles  Coverdale  with 
Arcadian  sympathy — went  down  the  avenue  and 
disappeared  in  the  house.  Sometimes  a  close  ob 
server,  had  he  been  ambushed  among  the  long 
grasses  of  the  orchard,  might  have  seen  the  host 
and  one  of  his  guests  emerging  at  the  back  door 
and,  sauntering  to  the  river-side,  step  into  the  boat, 
and  float  off  until  they  faded  in  the  shadow.  The 
spectacle  would  not  have  lessened  the  romance. 
If  it  were  afternoon — one  of  the  spectrally  sunny 
afternoons  which  often  bewitch  that  region  —  he 
would  be  only  the  more  convinced  that  there  was 
something  inexplicable  in  the  whole  matter  of  this 
man  whom  nobody  knew,  who  was  never  once 
seen  at  town-meeting,  and  concerning  whom  it  was 
whispered  that  he  did  not  constantly  attend  church 
all  day,  although  he  occupied  the  reverend  par 
sonage  of  the  village  and  had  unmeasured  acres 
of  manuscript  sermons  in  his  attic,  besides  the 


40  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

nearly  extinct  portrait  of  an  utterly  extinct  clergy 
man.  Mrs.  Radcliffe  and  Monk  Lewis  were  noth 
ing  to  this,  and  the  awe-stricken  observer,  if  he  could 
creep  safely  out  of  the  long  grass,  did  not  fail  to 
do  so  quietly,  fortifying  his  courage  by  remember 
ing  stories  of  the  genial  humanity  of  the  last  old 
pastor  who  inhabited  the  Manse,  and  who  for  fif 
ty  years  was  the  bland  and  beneficent  Pope  of 
Concord.  A  genial,  gracious  old  man,  whose 
memory  is  yet  sweet  in  the  village,  and  who,  wed 
ded  to  the  grave  traditions  of  New  England  theol 
ogy,  believed  of  his  young  relative  Waldo  Emer 
son,  as  Miss  Flite,  touching  her  forehead,  said 
of  her  landlord,  that  he  was  "  m,  quite  m,"  but 
was  proud  to  love  in  him  the  hereditary  integrity 
of  noble  ancestors. 

This  old  gentleman — an  eminent  figure  in  the 
history  of  the  Manse  and  in  all  reminiscences  of 
Concord — partook  sufficiently  of  mundane  weak 
nesses  to  betray  his  mortality.  Hawthorne  de 
scribes  him  watching  the  battle  of  Concord  from 
his  study  window.  But  when  the  uncertainty  of 
that  dark  moment  had  so  happily  resulted,  and 
the  first  battle-ground  of  the  Revolution  had  be 
come  a  spot  of  hallowed  and  patriotic  considera 
tion,  it  was  a  pardonable  pride  in  the  good  old 
man  to  order  his  servant,  whenever  there  was 
company,  to  assist  him  in  reaping  the  glory  due 


HAWTHORNE  41 

to  the  owner  of  a  spot  so  sacred.  Accordingly, 
when  some  reverend  or  distinguished  guest  sat 
with  the  pastor  in  his  little  parlor,  or,  of  a  sum 
mer  evening,  at  the  hospitable  door  under  the 
trees,  Jeremiah  or  Nicodemus,  the  cow-boy,  would 
deferentially  approach  and  inquire, 

"  Into  what  pasture  shall  I  turn  the  cow  to 
night,  sir  ?" 

And  the  old  gentleman  would  audibly  reply  : 

"  Into  the  battle-field,  Xicodemus,  into  the  bat 
tle-field." 

Then  naturally  followed  wonder,  inquiry,  a  walk 
in  the  twilight  to  the  river-bank,  the  old  gentle 
man's  story,  the  corresponding  respect  of  the  lis 
tening  visitor,  and  the  consequent  quiet  compla 
cency  and  harmless  satisfaction  in  the  clergyman's 
bosom.  That  throb  of  pride  was  the  one  drop 
of  peculiar  advantage  which  the  pastor  distilled 
from  the  Revolution.  He  could  not  but  fancy 
that  he  had  a  hand  in  so  famous  a  deed  accom 
plished  upon  land  now  his  own,  and  demeaned 
himself  accordingly  with  continental  dignity. 

The  pulpit,  however,  was  his  especial  sphere. 
There  he  reigned  supreme  ;  there  he  exhorted,  re 
buked,  and  advised,  as  in  the  days  of  Mather. 
There  he  inspired  that  profound  reverence  of 
which  he  was  so  proud,  and  which  induced  the 
matrons  of  the  village,  when  he  was  coming  to 


42  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

make  a  visit,  to  bedizen  the  children  in  their  Sun 
day  suits,  to  parade  the  best  teapot,  and  to  offer 
the  most  capacious  chair.  In  the  pulpit  he  de 
livered  everything  with  the  pompous  cadence  of 
the  elder  New  England  clergy,  and  a  sly  joke  is 
told  at  the  expense  of  his  even  temper,  that  on 
one  occasion,  when  loftily  reading  the  hymn,  he 
encountered  a  blot  upon  the  page  quite  obliterat 
ing  the  word  ;  but  without  losing  the  cadence,  al 
though  in  a  very  vindictive  tone  at  the  truant 
word,  or  the  culprit  who  erased  it,  he  finished  the 
reading  as  follows : 

"He  sits  upon  His  throne  above, 

Attending  angels  bless, 
While  Justice,  Mercy,  Truth — and  another  word 

which  is  blotted  out — 
Compose  His  princely  dress." 

"We  linger  around  the  Old  Manse  and  its  occu 
pants  as  fondly  as  Hawthorne,  but  no  more  fondly 
than  all  who  have  been  once  within  the  influence 
of  its  spell.  There  glimmer  in  my  memory  a  few 
hazy  days,  of  a  tranquil  and  half-pensive  charac 
ter,  which  I  am  conscious  were  passed  in  and 
around  the  house,  and  their  pensiveness  I  know  to 
be  only  that  touch  of  twilight  which  inhered  in 
the  house  and  all  its  associations.  Beside  the  few 
chance  visitors  I  have  named  there  were  city 
friends  occasionally,  figures  quite  unknown  to  the 


HA  WTHORXE  43 

village,  who  came  preceded  by  the  steam-shriek  of 
the  locomotive,  were  dropped  at  the  gate-posts, 
and  were  seen  no  more.  The  owner  was  as  much 
a  vague  name  to  me  as  to  any  one. 

During  Hawthorne's  first  year's  residence  in 
Concord  I  had  driven  up  with  some  friends  to 
an  aesthetic  tea  at  Mr.  Emerson's.  It  was  in  the 
winter,  and  a  great  wood -fire  blazed  upon  the 
hospitable  hearth.  There  were  various  men  and 
women  of  note  assembled,  and  I,  who  listened  at 
tentively  to  all  the  fine  things  that  were  said,  was 
for  some  time  scarcely  aware  of  a  man  who  sat 
upon  the  edge  of  the  circle,  a  little  withdrawn, 
his  head  slightly  thrown  forward  upon  his  breast, 
and  his  bright  eyes  clearly  burning  under  his  black 
brow.  As  I  drifted  down  the  stream  of  talk,  this 
person,  who  sat  silent  as  a  shadow,  looked  to  me 
as  Webster  might  have  looked  had  he  been  a 
poet — a  kind  of  poetic  "Webster.  He  rose  and 
walked  to  the  window,  and  stood  quietly  there  for 
a  long  time,  watching  the  dead  white  landscape. 
Xo  appeal  was  made  to  him,  nobody  looked  after 
him,  the  conversation  flowed  steadily  on  as  if 
every  one  understood  that  his  silence  was  to  be 
respected.  It  was  the  same  thing  at  table.  In 
vain  the  silent  man  imbibed  aesthetic  tea.  What 
ever  fancies  it  inspired  did  not  flower  at  his  lips. 
But  there  was  a  light  in  his  eye  which  assured  me 


44  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

that  nothing  was  lost.  So  supreme  was  his  silence 
that  it  presently  engrossed  me  to  the  exclusion 
of  everything  else.  There  was  very  brilliant  dis 
course,  but  this  silence  was  much  more  poetic  and 
fascinating.  Fine  things  were  said  by  the  philoso 
phers,  but  much  finer  things  were  implied  by  the 
dumbness  of  this  gentleman  with  heavy  brows 
and  black  hair.  When  he  presently  rose  and 
went,  Emerson,  with  the  "  slow,  wise  smile  "  that 
breaks  over  his  face,  like  day  over  the  sky,  said, 
"  Hawthorne  rides  well  his  horse  of  the  night." 

Thus  he  remained  in  my  memory,  a  shadow,  a 
phantom,  until  more  than  a  year  afterwards.  Then 
I  came  to  live  in  Concord.  Every  day  I  passed 
his  house,  but  when  the  villagers,  thinking  that 
perhaps  I  had  some  clew  to  the  mystery,  said, 
"  Do  you  know  this  Mr.  Hawthorne  ?"  I  said 
"  No,"  and  trusted  to  time. 

Time  justified  my  confidence,  and  one  day  I, 
too,  went  down  the  avenue  and  disappeared  in 
the  house.  I  mounted  those  mysterious  stairs  to 
that  apocryphal  study.  I  saw  "  the  cheerful  coat 
of  paint,  and  golden-tinted  paper-hangings,  light 
ing  up  the  small  apartment ;  while  the  shadow  of 
a  willow-tree,  that  swept  against  the  overhanging 
eaves,  attempered  the  cheery  western  sunshine." 
I  looked  from  the  little  northern  window  whence 
the  old  pastor  watched  the  battle,  and  in  the  small 


HAWTHORNE  45 

dining-room  beneath  it,  upon  the  first  floor,  there 
were 

"Dainty  chicken,  snow-white  bread," 

and  the  golden  juices  of  Italian  vineyards,  which 
still  feast  insatiable  memory. 

Our  author  occupied  the  Old  Manse  for  three 
years.  During  that  time  he  was  not  seen,  proba 
bly,  by  more  than  a  dozen  of  the  villagers.  His 
walks  could  easily  avoid  the  town,  and  upon  the 
river  he  was  always  sure  of  solitude.  It  was  his 
favorite  habit  to  bathe  every  evening  in  the  river, 
after  nightfall,  and  in  that  part  of  it  over  which 
the  old  bridge  stood,  at  which  the  battle  was 
fought.  Sometimes,  but  rarely,  his  boat  accom 
panied  another  up  the  stream,  and  I  recall  the 
silent  and  preternatural  vigor  with  which,  on  one 
occasion,  he  wielded  his  paddle  to  counteract  the 
bad  rowing  of  a  friend  who  conscientiously  con 
sidered  it  his  duty  to  do  something  and  not  let 
Hawthorne  work  alone;  but  who,  with  every 
stroke,  neutralized  all  Hawthorne's  efforts.  I  sup 
pose  he  would  have  struggled  until  he  fell  sense 
less,  rather  than  ask  his  friend  to  desist.  His  prin 
ciple  seemed  to  be,  if  a  man  cannot  understand 
without  talking  to  him,  it  is  quite  useless  to  talk, 
because  it  is  immaterial  whether  such  a  man  un 
derstands  or  not.  His  own  sympathy  was  so  broad 


OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 


46  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

and  sure  that  although  nothing  had  been  said  for 
hours  his  companion  knew  that  not  a  thing  had 
escaped  his  eve,  nor  had  a  single  pulse  of  beauty 
in  the  day  or  scene  or  society  failed  to  thrill  his 
heart.  In  this  way  his  silence  was  most  social. 
Everything  seemed  to  have  been  said.  It  was  a 
Barmecide  feast  of  discourse,  from  which  a  great 
er  satisfaction  resulted  than  from  an  actual  ban 
quet. 

When  a  formal  attempt  was  made  to  desert  this 
style  of  conversation,  the  result  was  ludicrous. 
Once  Emerson  and  Thoreau  arrived  to  pay  a  call. 
They  were  shown  into  the  little  parlor  upon  the 
avenue,  and  Hawthorne  presently  entered.  Each 
of  the  guests  sat  upright  in  his  chair  like  a  Ro 
man  senator.  "  To  them  "  Hawthorne,  like  a  Da- 
cian  king.  The  call  went  on,  but  in  a  most  mel 
ancholy  manner.  The  host  sat  perfectly  still,  or 
occasionally  propounded  a  question  which  Thoreau 
answered  accurately,  and  there  the  thread  broke 
short  off.  Emerson  delivered  sentences  that  only 
needed  the  setting  of  an  essay  to  charm  the  world  ; 
but  the  whole  visit  was  a  vague  ghost  of  the  Mori- 
day-evening  club  at  Mr.  Emerson's — it  was  a  great 
failure.  Had  they  all  been  lying  idly  upon  the 
river  brink,  or  strolling  in  Thoreau's  blackberry 
pastures,  the  result  would  have  been  utterly  dif 
ferent.  But  imprisoned  in  the  proprieties  of  a 


HAWTHORXE  47 

parlor,  each  a  wild  man  in  his  way,  with  a  neces 
sity  of  talking  inherent  in  the  nature  of  the  occa 
sion,  there  was  only  a  waste  of  treasure.  This  was 
the  only  "  call "  in  which  I  ever  knew  Hawthorne 
to  be  involved. 

In  Mr.  Emerson's  house,  I  said,  it  seemed  always 
morning.  But  Hawthorne's  black -ash  trees  and 
scraggy  apple-boughs  shaded 

"a  land 
In  which  it  seemed  always  afternoon." 

I  do  not  doubt  that  the  lotus  grew  along  the 
grassy  marge  of  the  Concord  behind  his  house, 
and  it  was  served,  subtly  concealed,  to  all  his 
guests.  The  house,  its  inmates,  and  its  life  lay, 
dream-like,  upon  the  edge  of  the  little  village. 
You  fancied  that  they  all  came  together  and  be 
longed  together,  and  were  glad  that  at  length 
some  idol  of  your  imagination,  some  poet  whose 
spell  had  held  you  and  would  hold  you  forever, 
was  housed  as  such  a  poet  should  be. 

During  the  lapse  of  the  three  years  since  the 
bridal  tour  of  twenty  miles  ended  at  the  "two  tall 
gate  -  posts  of  rough-hewn  stone,"  a  little  wicker 
wagon  had  appeared  at  intervals  upon  the  avenue, 
and  a  placid  babe,  whose  eyes  the  soft  Concord 
day  had  touched  with  the  blue  of  its  beauty,  lay 
looking  tranquilly  up  at  the  grave  old  trees,  which 


48  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

sighed  lofty  lullabies  over  her  sleep.  The  tran 
quillity  of  the  golden  -  haired  Una  was  the  living 
and  breathing  type  of  the  dreamy  life  of  the  Old 
Manse.  Perhaps,  that  being  attained,  it  was  as 
well  to  go.  Perhaps  our  author  was  not  surprised 
nor  displeased  when  the  hints  came,  "growing 
more  and  more  distinct,  that  the  owner  of  the  old 
house  was  pining  for  his  native  air."  One  after 
noon  I  entered  the  study,  and  learned  from  its 
occupant  that  the  last  story  he  should  ever  write 
there  was  written.  The  son  of  the  old  pastor 
yearned  for  his  homestead.  The  light  of  another 
summer  would  seek  its  poet  in  the  Old  Manse,  but 
in  vain. 

While  Hawthorne  had  been  quietly  writing  in 
the  "most  delightful  little  nook  of  a  study,"  Mr. 
Polk  had  been  elected  President,  and  Mr.  Ban 
croft,  in  the  cabinet,  did  not  forget  his  old  friend, 
the  surveyor  in  the  custom-house.  There  came 
suggestions  and  offers  of  various  attractions.  Still 
loving  New  England,  would  he  tarry  there,  or,  as 
inspector  of  woods  and  forests  in  some  far-away 
island  of  the  southern  sea,  some  hazy  strip  of  dis 
tance  seen  from  Florida,  would  he  taste  the  trop 
ics?  He  meditated  all  the  chances,  without  im 
mediately  deciding.  Gathering  up  his  house 
hold  gods,  he  passed  out  of  the  Old  Manse  as  its 
heir  entered,  and  before  the  end  of  summer  was 


HA.WTHORXE  49 

domesticated  in  the  custom-house  of  his  native 
town  of  Salem.  This  was  in  the  year  1846. 
Upon  leaving  the  Old  Manse  he  published  the 
Mosses,  announcing  that  it  was  the  last  collec 
tion  of  tales  he  should  put  forth.  Those  who 
knew  him  and  recognized  his  value  to  our  litera 
ture  trembled  lest  this  was  the  last  word  from 
one  who  spoke  only  pearls  and  rubies.  It  was  a 
foolish  fear.  The  sun  must  shine,  the  sea  must 
roll,  the  bird  must  sing,  and  the  poet  write. 
During  his  life  in  Salem,  of  which  the  introduc 
tion  to  The  Scarlet  Letter  describes  the  official 
aspect,  he  wrote  that  romance.  It  is  inspired  by 
the  spirit  of  the  place.  It  presents  more  vividly 
than  any  history  the  gloomy  picturesqtieness  of 
early  Xew  England  life.  There  is  no  strain  in 
our  literature  so  characteristic  or  more  real  than 
that  which  Hawthorne  had  successfully  attempted 
in  several  of  his  earlier  sketches,  and  of  which 
The  Scarlet  Letter  is  the  great  triumph.  It  be 
came  immediately  popular,  and  directly  placed 
the  writer  of  stories  for  a  small  circle  among  the 
world's  masters  of  romance. 

Times  meanwhile  changed,  and  presidents  with 
them.  General  Taylor  was  elected,  and  the  Salem 
collector  retired.  It  is  one  of  the  romantic  points 
of  Hawthorne's  quiet  life  that  its  changes  have 
been  so  frequently  determined  by  political  events, 


50  ~   LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

which,  more  than  all  others,  are  the  most  entirely 
foreign  to  his  tastes  and  habits.  He  retired  to  the 
hills  of  Berkshire,  the  eje  of  the  world  now  re 
garding  his  movements.  There  he  lived  a  year  or 
two  in  a  little  red  cottage  upon  the  "  Stockbridge 
Bowl,"  as  a  small  lake  near  that  town  is  called. 
In  this  retreat  he  wrote  The  House  of  the  Seven 
Gables,  which  more  deeply  confirmed  the  literary 
position  already  acquired  for  him  by  the  first 
romance.  The  scene  is  laid  in  Salem,  as  if  he 
could  not  escape  a  strange  fascination  in  the  witch- 
haunted  town  of  our  early  history.  It  is  the  same 
black  canvas  upon  which  plays  the  rainbow-flash 
of  his  fancy,  never,  in  its  brightest  moment,  more 
than  illuminating  the  gloom.  This  marks  all  his 
writings.  They  have  a  terrible  beauty,  like  the 
siren,  and  their  fascination  is  as  sure. 

After  six  years  of  absence  Hawthorne  returned 
to  Concord,  where  he  purchased  a  small  house 
formerly  occupied  by  Orphic  Alcott.  When  that 
philosopher  came  into  possession  it  was  a  miser 
able  little  house  of  two  peaked  gables.  But  the 
genius  which  recreated  itself  in  devising  grace 
ful  summer-houses,  like  that  for  Mr.  Emerson, 
already  noticed,  soon  smoothed  the  new  resi 
dence  into  some  kind  of  comeliness.  It  was  an 
old  house  when  Mr.  Alcott  entered  it,  but  his 
tasteful  finger  touched  it  with  picturesque  grace. 


HAWTHORXE  51 

Not  like  a  tired  old  drudge  of  a  house,  rusting 
into  unhonored  decay,  but  with  a  modest  fresh 
ness  that  does  not  belie  the  innate  sobriety  of  a 
venerable  New  England  farm-house,  the  present 
residence  of  our  author  stands,  withdrawn  a  few 
yards  from  the  high-road  to  Boston,  along  which 
marched  the  British  soldiers  to  Concord  bridge. 
It  lies  at  the  foot  of  a  wooded  hill,  a  neat  house 
of  a  "  rusty  olive  hue,"  with  a  porch  in  front,  and 
a  central  peak,  and  a  piazza  at  each  end.  The 
genius  for  summer-houses  has  had  full  play  upon 
the  hill  behind.  Here,  upon  the  homely  steppes 
of  Concord,  is  a  strain  of  Persia.  Mr.  Alcott 
built  terraces  and  arbors  and  pavilions  of  boughs 
and  rough  stems  of  trees,  revealing — somewhat 
inadequately,  perhaps  —  the  hanging  gardens  of 
delight  that  adorn  the  Babylon  of  his  orphic 
imagination.  The  hill -side  is  no  unapt  emblem 
of  his  intellectual  habit,  which  garnishes  the  arid 
commonplaces  of  life  with  a  cold  poetic  aurora, 
forgetting  that  it  is  the  inexorable  law  of  light  to 
deform  as  well  as  adorn.  Treating  life  as  a  grand 
epic  poem,  the  philosophic  Alcott  forgets  that 
Homer  must  nod  or  we  should  all  fall  asleep. 
The  world  would  not  be  very  beautiful  nor  inter 
esting  if  it  were  all  one  huge  summit  of  Mont 
Blanc. 

Unhappily,  the  terraced  hill -side,  like  the  sum- 


52  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

mer-house  upon  Mr.  Emerson's  lawn,  "  lacks  tech 
nical  arrangement,"  and  the  wild  winds  play  with 
these  architectural  toys  of  fancy,  like  lions  with 
humming-birds.  They  are  gradually  falling,  shat 
tered,  and  disappearing.  Fine  locust-trees  shade 
them  and  ornament  the  hill  with  perennial  beauty. 
The  hanging  gardens  of  Semiramis  were  not  more 
fragrant  than  Hawthorne's  hill-side  during  the 
June  blossoming  of  the  locusts.  A  few  young 
elms,  some  white-pines  and  young  oaks,  complete 
the  catalogue  of  trees.  A  light  breeze  constantly 
fans  the  brow  of  the  hill,  making  harps  of  the 
tree -tops  and  singing  to  our  author,  who,  "  with  a 
book  in  my  hand,  or  an  unwritten  book  in  my 
thoughts,"  lies  stretched  beneath  them  in  the 
shade. 

From  the  height  of  the  hill  the  eye  courses,  un 
restrained,  over  the  solitary  landscape  of  Concord, 
broad  and  still,  broken  only  by  the  slight  wooded 
undulations  of  insignificant  hillocks.  The  river 
is  not  visible,  nor  any  gleam  of  lake.  "Walden 
Pond  is  just  behind  the  wood  in  front,  and  not  far 
away  over  the  meadows  sluggishly  steals  the  river. 
It  is  the  most  quiet  of  prospects.  Eight  acres  of 
good  land  lie  in  front  of  the  house,  across  the 
road,  and  in  the  rear  the  estate  extends  a  little 
distance  over  the  brow  of  the  hill. 

This  latter  is  not  good  garden -ground,  but  it 


BAWTHORXE  53 

yields  that  other  crop  which  the  poet  "gathers  in 
a  song."  Perhaps  the  world  will  forgive  our  au 
thor  that  he  is  not  a  prize  farmer,  and  makes  but 
an  indifferent  figure  at  the  annual  cattle-show. 
We  have  seen  that  he  is  more  nomadic  than  agri 
cultural.  He  has  wandered  from  spot  to  spot, 
pitching  a  temporary  tent,  then  striking  it  for 
"fresh  fields  and  pastures  new."  It  is  natural, 
therefore,  that  he  should  call  his  house  "  The 
"Wayside" — a  bench  upon  the  road  where  he  sits 
for  a  while  before  passing  on.  If  the  wayfarer 
finds  him  upon  that  bench  he  shall  have  rare  pleas 
ure  in  sitting  with  him,  yet  shudder  while  he  stays. 
For  the  pictures  of  our  poet  have  more  than  the 
shadows  of  Rembrandt.  If  you  listen  to  his  story, 
the  lonely  pastures  and  dull  towns  of  our  dear  old 
homely  Xew  England  shall  become  suddenly  as 
radiant  with  grace  and  terrible  with  tragedy  as 
any  country  and  any  time.  The  waning  afternoon 
in  Concord,  in  which  the  blue-frocked  farmers  are 
reaping  and  hoeing,  shall  set  in  pensive  glory. 
The  woods  will  forever  after  be  haunted  with 
strange  forms.  You  will  hear  whispers  and  mu 
sic  "  i'  the  air."  In  the  softest  morning  you  will 
suspect  sadness ;  in  the  most  fervent  noon  a  name 
less  terror.  It  is  because  the  imagination  of  our 
author  treads  the  almost  imperceptible  line  be 
tween  the  natural  and  the  supernatural.  We  are 


54  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

all  conscious  of  striking  it  sometimes.  But  we 
avoid  it.  We  recoil  and  hurry  away,  nor  dare  to 
glance  over  our  shoulders  lest  we  should  see  phan 
toms.  What  are  these  tales  of  supernatural  ap 
pearances,  as  well  authenticated  as  any  news  of 
the  day — and  what  is  the  sphere  which  they  im 
ply  ?  What  is  the  more  subtle  intellectual  appre 
hension  of  fate  and  its  influence  upon  imagination 
and  life  ?  Whatever  it  is,  it  is  the  mystery  of  the 
fascination  of  these  tales.  They  converse  with 
that  dreadful  realm  as  with  our  real  world.  The 
light  of  our  sun  is  poured  by  genius  upon  the 
phantoms  we  did  not  dare  to  contemplate,  and 
lo!  they  are  ourselves,  unmasked,  and  playing  our 
many  parts.  An  unutterable  sadness  seizes  the  read 
er  as  the  inevitable  black  thread  appears.  For  here 
genius  assures  us  what  we  trembled  to  suspect,  but 
could  not  avoid  suspecting,  that  the  black  thread 
is  inwoven  with  all  forms  of  life,  with  all  develop 
ment  of  character. 

It  is  for  this  peculiarity,  which  harmonizes  so 
well  with  ancient  places,  whose  pensive  silence 
seems  the  trance  of  memory  musing  over  the 
young  and  lovely  life  that  illuminated  its  lost 
years — that  Hawthorne  is  so  intimately  associated 
with  the  Old  Manse.  Yet  that  was  but  the  tent 
of  a  night  for  him.  Already,  with  the  Blithedale 
Romance^  which  is  dated  from  Concord,  a  new 


H AWT  HORSE  55 

interest  begins  to  cluster  around  "  The  "Way 
side." 

I  know  not  how  I  can  more  fitly  conclude  these 
reminiscences  of  Concord  and  Hawthorne,  whose 
own  stories  have  always  a  saddening  close,  than  by 
relating  an  occurrence  which  blighted  to  many 
hearts  the  beauty  of  the  quiet  Concord  river,  and 
seemed  not  inconsistent  with  its  lonely  landscape. 
It  has  the  further  fitness  of  typifying  the  opera 
tion  of  our  author's  imagination :  a  tranquil  stream, 
clear  and  bright  with  sunny  gleams,  crowned  with 
lilies  and  graceful  with  swaying  grass,  yet  doing 
terrible  deeds  inexorably,  and  therefore  forever 
after  of  a  shadowed  beauty. 

Martha  was  the  daughter  of  a  plain  Concord 
farmer,  a  girl  of  delicate  and  shy  temperament, 
who  excelled  so  much  in  study  that  she  was  sent 
to  a  fine  academy  in  a  neighboring  town,  and  won 
all  the  honors  of  the  course.  She  met  at  the 
school,  and  in  the  society  of  the  place,  a  refine 
ment  and  cultivation,  a  social  gayety  and  grace, 
which  were  entirely  unknown  in  the  hard  life  she 
had  led  at  home,  and  which  by  their  very  novelty, 
as  well  as  because  they  harmonized  with  her  own 
nature  and  dreams,  were  doubly  beautiful  and  fas 
cinating.  She  enjoyed  this  life  to  the  full,  while 
her  timidity  kept  her  only  a  spectator;  and  she 
ornamented  it  with  a  fresher  grace,  suggestive  of 


56  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

the  woods  and  fields,  when  she  ventured  to  engage 
in  the  airy  game.  It  was  a  sphere  for  her  capac 
ities  and  talents.  She  shone  in  it,  and  the  con 
sciousness  of  a  true  position  and  general  apprecia 
tion  gave  her  the  full  use  of  all  her  powers.  She 
admired  and  was  admired.  She  was  surrounded 
by  gratifications  of  taste,  by  the  stimulants  and 
rewards  of  ambition.  The  world  was  happy,  and 
she  was  worthy  to  live  in  it.  But  at  times  a  cloud 
suddenly  dashed  athwart  the  sun — a  shadow  stole, 
dark  and  chill,  to  the  very  edge  of  the  charmed 
circle  in  which  she  stood.  She  knew  well  what 
it  was  and  what  it  foretold,  but  she  would  not 
pause  nor  heed.  The  sun  shone  again  ;  the  future 
smiled ;  youth,  beauty,  and  all  gentle  hopes  and 
thoughts  bathed  the  moment  in  lambent  light. 

But  school-days  ended  at  last,  and  with  the  re 
ceding  town  in  which  they  had  been  passed  the 
bright  days  of  life  disappeared,  and  forever.  It 
is  probable  that  the  girl's  fancy  had  been  fed, 
perhaps  indiscreetly  pampered,  by  her  experience 
there.  But  it  was  no  fairy -land.  It  was  an 
academy  town  in  New  England,  and  the  fact  that 
it  was  so  alluring  is  a  fair  indication  of  the  kind  of 
life  from  which  she  had  emerged,  and  to  which 
she  now  returned.  What  could  she  do  ?  In  the 
dreary  round  of  petty  details,  in  the  incessant 
drudgery  of  a  poor  farmer's  household,  with  no 


OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 


companions  of  any  sympathy — for  the  family  of 
a  hard-working  New  England  farmer  are  not  the 
Chloes  and  Clarissas  of  pastoral  poetry,  nor  are 
cow-boys  Corydons — with  no  opportunity  of  re 
tirement  and  cultivation,  for  reading  and  studying 
— which  is  always  voted  "stuff"  under  such  cir 
cumstances — the  light  suddenly  quenched  out  of 
life,  what  was  she  to  do  ? 

"  Adapt  herself  to  her  circumstances.  Why 
had  she  shot  from  her  sphere  in  this  silly  way  ?" 
demands  unanimous  common-sense  in  valiant  he 
roics. 

The  simple  answer  is,  that  she  had  only  used  all 
her  opportunities,  and  that,  although  it  was  no 
fault  of  hers  that  the  routine  of  her  life  was  in 
every  way  repulsive,  she  did  struggle  to  accommo 
date  herself  to  it — and  failed.  When  she  found 
it  impossible  to  drag  on  at  home,  she  became  an 
inmate  of  a  refined  and  cultivated  household  in 
the  village,  where  she  had  opportunity  to  fol 
low  her  own  fancies,  and  to  associate  with  edu 
cated  and  attractive  persons.  But  even  here 
she  could  not  escape  the  feeling  that  it  was  all 
temporary,  that  her  position  was  one  of  depend 
ence  ;  and  her  pride,  now  grown  morbid,  often 
drove  her  from  the  very  society  which  alone  was 
agreeable  to  her.  This  was  all  genuine.  There 
was  not  the  slightest  strain  of  the  fermne  incom- 


58  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

prise  in  her  demeanor.  She  was  always  shy  and 
silent,  with  a  touching  reserve  which  won  interest 
and  confidence,  but  left  also  a  vague  sadness  in 
the  mind  of  the  observer.  After  a  few  months 
she  made  another  effort  to  rend  the  cloud  which 
was  gradually  darkening  around  her,  and  opened 
a  school  for  young  children.  But  although  the 
interest  of  friends  secured  for  her  a  partial  suc 
cess,  her  gravity  and  sadness  failed  to  excite  the 
sympathy  of  her  pupils,  who  missed  in  her  the 
playful  gayety  always  most  winning  to  children. 
Martha,  however,  pushed  bravely  on,  a  figure  of 
tragic  sobriety  to  all  who  watched  her  course. 
The  farmers  thought  her  a  strange  girl,  and  won 
dered  at  the  ways  of  a  farmer's  daughter  who  was 
not  content  to  milk  cows  and  churn  butter  and 
fry  pork,  without  further  hope  or  thought.  The 
good  clergyman  of  the  town,  interested  in  her 
situation,  sought  a  confidence  she  did  not  care 
to  bestow,  and  so,  doling  out  a,  b,  c,  to  a  wild 
group  of  boys  and  girls,  she  found  that  she  could 
not  untie  the  Gordian  knot  of  her  life,  and  felt, 
with  terror,  that  it  must  be  cut. 

One  summer  evening  she  left  her  father's  house 
and  walked  into  the  fields  alone.  Night  came,  but 
Martha  did  not  return.  The  family  became  anx 
ious,  inquired  if  any  one  had  noticed  the  direction 
in  which  she  went,  learned  from  the  neighbors 


HAWTHORXE  59 

that  she  was  not  visiting,  that  there  was  no  lect 
ure  or  meeting  to  detain  her,  and  wonder  passed 
into  apprehension.  Neighbors  went  into  the  ad 
jacent  woods  and  called,  but  received  no  answer. 
Every  instant  the  awful  shadow  of  some  dread 
event  solemnized  the  gathering  groups.  Every 
one  thought  what  no  one  dared  whisper,  until  a 
low  voice  suggested  "  the  river."  Then,  with  the 
swiftness  of  certainty,  all  friends,  far  and  near, 
were  roused,  and  thronged  along  the  banks  of 
the  stream.  Torches  flashed  in  boats  that  put  off 
in  the  terrible  search.  Hawthorne,  then  living 
in  the  Old  Manse,  was  summoned,  and  the  man 
whom  the  villagers  had  only  seen  at  morning  as  a 
musing  spectre  in  his  garden,  now  appeared  among 
them  at  night  to  devote  his  strong  arm  and  steady 
heart  to  their  service.  The  boats  drifted  slowly 
down  the  stream — the  torches  flared  strangely 
upon  the  black  repose  of  the  water,  and  upon  the 
long,  slim  grasses  that,  weeping,  fringed  the 
marge.  Upon  both  banks  silent  and  awe-stricken 
crowds  hastened  along,  eager  and  dreading  to  find 
the  slightest  trace  of  what  they  sought.  Sud 
denly  they  came  upon  a  few  articles  of  dress, 
heavy  with  the  night-dew.  Ko  one  spoke,  for  no 
one  had  doubted  the  result.  It  was  clear  that 
Martha  had  strayed  to  the  river  and  quietly  asked 
of  its  stillness  the  repose  she  sought.  The  boats 


60  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

gathered  around  the  spot.  With  every  implement 
that  could  be  of  service  the  melancholy  search  be 
gan.  Long  intervals  of  fearful  silence  ensued,  but 
at  length,  towards  midnight,  the  sweet  face  of  the 
dead  girl  was  raised  more  placidly  to  the  stars 
than  ever  it  had  been  to  the  sun. 

"Oh  !  is  it  weed  or  fish  or  floating  hair — 
A  tress  o'  golden  hair, 
O'  drowned  maiden's  hair. 

Above  the  nets  at  sea  ? 
Was  never  salmon  yet  that  shone  so  fair 

Among  the  stakes  on  Dee." 

So  ended  a  village  tragedy.  The  reader  may 
possibly  find  in  it  the  original  of  the  thrilling 
conclusion  of  the  Blithedale  Romance,  and  learn 
anew  that  dark  as  is  the  thread  with  which 
Hawthorne  weaves  his  spells,  it  is  no  darker  than 
those  with  which  tragedies  are  spun,  even  in  re 
gions  apparently  so  torpid  as  Concord. 


THE  WORKS   OF 
NATHANIEL    HAWTHORNE 


THE  WORKS  OF 
NATHANIEL    HAWTHORNE 

THE  traveller  by  the  Eastern  Railroad,  from 
Boston,  reaches  in  less  than  an  hour  the  old  town 
of  Salem,  Massachusetts.  It  is  chiefly  composed  of 
plain  wooden  houses,  but  it  has  a  quaint  air  of  past 
provincial  grandeur,  and  has  indeed  been  an  im 
portant  commercial  town.  The  first  American 
ship  for  Calcutta  and  China  sailed  from  this  port ; 
and  Salem  ships  opened  our  trade  with  New  Hol 
land  and  the  South  Seas.  But  its  glory  has  long 
since  departed,  with  that  of  its  stately  and  respect 
able  neighbors,  Newburyport  and  Portsmouth. 
There  is  still,  however,  a  custom-house  in  Salem, 
there  are  wharves  and  chandlers'  shops  and  a 
faint  show  of  shipping  and  an  air  of  marine  ca 
pacity  which  no  apparent  result  justifies.  It  sits 
upon  the  shore  like  an  antiquated  sea-captain,  grave 
and  silent,  in  tarpaulin  and  duck  trousers,  idly 
watching  the  ocean  upon  which  he  will  never  sail 
again. 

But  this  touching  aspect  of  age  and  lost  pros- 


64  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

perity  merely  serves  to  deepen  the  peculiar  im 
pression  of  the  old  city,  which  is  not  derived  from 
its  former  commercial  importance,  but  from  other 
associations.  Salem  village  was  a  famous  place  in 
the  Puritan  annals.  The  tragedy  of  the  witchcraft 
tortures  and  murders  has  cast  upon  it  a  ghostly 
spell,  from  which  it  seems  never  to  have  escaped ; 
and  even  the  sojourner  of  to-day,  as  he  loiters  along 
the  shore  in  the  sunniest  morning  of  June,  will 
sometimes  feel  an  icy  breath  in  the  air,  chilling 
the  very  marrow  of  his  bones.  Nor  is  he  consoled 
by  being  told  that  it  is  only  the  east  wind ;  for  he 
cannot  help  believing  that  an  invisible  host  of 
Puritan  spectres  have  breathed  upon  him,  revenge 
ful,  as  he  poached  upon  their  ancient  haunts. 

The  Puritan  spirit  was  neither  gracious  nor 
lovely,  but  nothing  softer  than  its  iron  hand  could 
have  done  its  necessary  work.  The  Puritan  char 
acter  was  narrow,  intolerant,  and  exasperating. 
The  forefathers  were  very  "sour"  in  the  estima 
tion  of  Morton  and  his  merry  company  at  Mount 
"VYollaston.  But  for  all  that,  Bradstreet  and  Car 
ver  and  Winthrop  were  better  forefathers  than  the 
gay  Morton,  and  the  Puritan  spirit  is  doubtless  the 
moral  influence  of  modern  civilization,  both  in  Old 
and  New  England.  By  the  fruit  let  the  seed  be 
judged.  The  State  to  whose  rough  coast  the  May 
flower  came,  and  in  which  the  Pilgrim  spirit  has 


THE  WORKS  OF  NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE       65 

been  most  active,  is  to-day  the  chief  of  all  human 
societies,  politically,  morally,  and  socially.  It  is 
the  community  in  which  the  average  of  well-being 
is  higher  than  in  any  State  we  know  in  history. 
Puritan  though  it  be,  it  is  more  truly  liberal  and 
free  than  any  large  community  in  the  world.  But 
it  had  bleak  beginnings.  The  icy  shore,  the  som 
bre  pines,  the  stealthy  savages,  the  hard  soil,  the 
unbending  religious  austerity,  the  Scriptural  se 
verity,  the  arrogant  virtues,  the  angry  intolerance 
of  contradiction — they  all  made  a  narrow  strip  of 
sad  civilization  between  the  pitiless  sea  and  the  re 
morseless  forests.  The  moral  and  physical  tenacity 
which  is  wrestling  with  the  Rebellion  was  tough 
ened  among  these  flinty  and  forbidding  rocks. 
The  fig,  the  pomegranate,  and  the  almond  would 
not  grow  there,  nor  the  nightingale  sing ;  but 
nobler  men  than  its  children  the  sun  never  shone 
upon,  nor  has  the  heart  of  man  heard  sweeter 
music  than  the  voices  of  James  Otis  and  Samuel 
Adams.  Think  of  Plymouth  in  1620,  and  of 
Massachusetts  to-day !  Out  of  strength  came  forth 
sweetness. 

With  some  of  the  darkest  passages  in  Puritan 
history  this  old  town  of  Salem,  which  dozes  ap 
parently  with  the  most  peaceful  conscience  in  the 
world,  is  identified,  and  while  its  Fourth  of  July 
bells  were  joyfully  ringing  sixty  years  ago 


66  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

thaniel  Hathorne  was  born.  He  subsequently 
chose  to  write  the  name  Hawthorne,  because  he 
thought  he  had  discovered  that  it  was  the  original 
spelling.  In  the  introduction  to  The  Scarlet 
Letter,  Hawthorne  speaks  of  his  ancestors  as  com 
ing  from  Europe  in  the  seventeenth  century,  and 
establishing  themselves  in  Salem,  where  they 
served  the  State  and  propitiated  Heaven  by  join 
ing  in  the  persecution  of  Quakers  and  witches. 
The  house  known  as  the  Witch  House  is  still 
standing  on  the  corner  of  Summer  and  Essex 
streets.  It  was  built  in  1642  by  Captain  George 
Corwin,  and  here  in  1692  many  of  the  unfortu 
nates  who  were  palpably  guilty  of  age  and  ugli 
ness  were  examined  by  the  Honorable  Jonathan 
Curwiri,  Major  Gedney,  Captain  John  Higginson, 
and  John  Hathorn,  Esquire. 

The  name  of  this  last  worthy  occurs  in  one  of 
the  first  and  most  famous  of  the  witch  trials,  that 
of  "Goodwife  Cory,"  in  March,  1692,  only  a 
month  after  the  beginning  of  the  delusion  at  the 
house  of  the  minister  Parris.  Goodwife  Cory  was 
accused  by  ten  children,  of  whom  Elizabeth  Parris 
was  one ;  they  declared  that  they  were  pinched  by 
her  and  strangled,  and  that  she  brought  them  a 
book  to  sign.  "  Mr.  Hathorn,  a  magistrate  of 
Salem,"  says  Eobert  Calef,  in  More  Wonders  of 
the  Invisible  World,  "asked  her  why  she  afflicted 


THE  WORKS  OF  NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE       67 

these  children.  She  said  she  did  not  afflict  them. 
He  asked  her  who  did  then.  She  said,  I  do  not 
know;  how  should  I  know?  She  said  they  were 
poor,  distracted  creatures,  and  no  heed  ought  to  be 
given  to  what  they  said.  Mr.  Hathorn  and  Mr. 
Xoyes  replied,  that  it  was  the  judgment  of  all  that 
were  there  present  that  they  were  bewitched,  and 
only  she  (the  accused)  said  they  were  distracted. 
She  was  accused  by  them  that  the  Mack  man 
whispered  to  her  in  her  ear  now  (while  she  was 
upon  examination),  and  that  she  had  a  yellow  bird 
that  did  use  to  suck  between  her  fingers,  and  that 
the  said  bird  did  suck  now  in  the  assembly." 
John  Hathorn  and  Jonathan  Curwin  were  "  the 
Assistants"  of  Salem  village,  and  held  most  of 
the  examinations  and  issued  the  warrants.  Jus 
tice  Hathorn  was  very  swift  in  judgment,  holding 
every  accused  person  guilty  in  every  particular. 
When  poor  Jonathan  Gary  of  Charlestown  attend 
ed  his  wife  charged  with  witchcraft  before  Justice 
Hathorn,  he  requested  that  he  might  hold  one  of  her 
hands,  "  but  it  was  denied  me.  Then  she  desired 
me  to  wipe  the  tears  from  her  eyes  and  the  sweat 
from  her  face,  which  I  did ;  then  she  desired  that 
she  might  lean  herself  on  me,  saying  she  should 
faint.  Justice  Hathorn  replied,  she  had  strength 
enough  to  torment  these  persons,  and  she  should 
have  strength  enough  to  stand.  I  speaking  some- 


68  LITERAET  AND  SOCIAL  ESSA7S 

thing  against  their  cruel  proceedings,  they  com 
manded  me  to  be  silent,  or  else  I  should  be  turned 
out  of  the  room."  "What  a  piteous  picture  of  the 
awful  colonial  inquisition  and  the  village  Torque- 
mada!  What  a  grim  portrait  of  an  ancestor  to 
hang  in  your  memory,  and  to  trace  your  kindred 
to! 

Hawthorne's  description  of  his  ancestors  in  the 
Introduction  to  The  Scarlet  Letter  is  very  delight 
ful.  As  their  representative,  he  declares  that  he 
takes  shame  to  himself  for  their  sake,  on  account  of 
these  relentless  persecutions;  but  he  thinks  them 
earnest  and  energetic.  "  From  father  to  son,  for 
above  a  hundred  years,  they  followed  the  sea;  a 
gray-headed  ship-master,  in  each  generation,  retir 
ing  from  the  quarter-deck  to  the  homestead,  while 
a  boy  of  fourteen  took  the  hereditary  place  before 
the  mast,  confronting  the  salt  spray  and  the  gale, 
which  had  blustered  against  his  sire  and  grand- 
sire.  The  boy  also,  in  due  time,  passed  from  the 
forecastle  to  the  cabin,  spent  a  tempestuous  man 
hood,  and  returned  from  his  world-wanderings,  to 
grow  old,  and  die,  and  mingle  his  dust  with  the 
natal  earth."  Not  all,  however,  for  the  last  of  the 
line  of  sailors,  Captain  Nathaniel  Hathorne,  who 
married  Elizabeth  Clarke  Manning,  died  at  Cal 
cutta  after  the  birth  of  three  children,  a  boy  and 
two  girls.  The  house  in  which  the  boy  was  born 


THE  WORKS  OF  XATHAXIEL  HAWTHORXE       69 

is  still  standing  upon  Union  Street,  which  leads  to 
the  Long  Wharf,  the  chief  seat  of  the  old  foreign 
trade  of  Saleip.  The  next  house,  with  a  back 
entrance  on  Union  Street,  is  the  Manning  house, 
where  many  years  of  the  young  Hawthorne's  life 
were  spent  in  the  care  of  his  uncle,  Robert  Man 
ning.  He  lived  often  upon  an  estate  belonging 
to  his  mother's  family,  in  the  town  of  Raymond, 
near  Sebago  Lake,  in  Maine.  The  huge  house 
there  was  called  Manning's  Folly,  and  is  now  said 
to  be  used  as  a  meeting-house.  His  uncle  sent 
Hawthorne  to  Bowdoin  College,  where  he  gradu 
ated  in  1825.  A  correspondent  of  the  Boston 
Daily  Advertiser,  writing  from  Bowdoin  at  the 
late  commencement,  says  that  he  had  recently 
found  "  in  an  old  drawer"  some  papers  which 
proved  to  be  the  manuscript  "parts"  of  the  stu 
dents  at  the  Junior  exhibition  of  182i;  among 
them  was  Hawthorne's  "De  Patribus  Conscriptis 
Romanorum."  "  It  is  quite  brief,"  writes  the 
correspondent,  "but  is  really  curious  as  perhaps 
the  ouly  college  exercise  in  existence  of  the  great 
tragic  writer  of  our  day  (has  there  been  a  greater 
since  Shakespeare?).  The  last  sentence  is  as  fol 
lows  (note  the  words  which  I  put  in  italics) :  '  Au 
gustus  equidem  antiquam  magnificentiam  patribus 
reddidit,  sed  fidgor  t ant  inn  fuit  sine  fervore. 
Xunquam  in  republica  senatoribus  potestas  recu- 


70  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

perata,  postreraum  species  etiara  amissa  est.'  On 
the  same  occasion  Longfellow  had  the  salutatory 
oration  in  Latin — 'Oratio  Latina;  Anglici  Poe- 
t».5 " 

Hawthorne  has  given  ns  a  charming  glimpse  of 
himself  as  a  college  boy  in  the  letter  to  his  fellow- 
student,  Horatio  Bridge,  of  the  Navy,  whose 
Journal  of  an  African  Cruiser  he  afterwards 
edited.  "I  know  not  whence  your  faith  came; 
but  while  we  were  lads  together  at  a  country  col 
lege,  gathering  blueberries,  in  study-hours,  under 
those  tall  academic  pines ;  or  watching  the  great 
logs  as  they  tumbled  along  the  current  of  the  An- 
droscoggin ;  or  shooting  pigeons  and  gray  squir 
rels  in  the  woods;  or  bat -fowling  in  the  sum 
mer  twilight ;  or  catching  trouts  in  that  shadowy 
little  stream  which,  I  suppose,  is  still  wandering 
riverward  through  the  forest — though  you  and  I 
will  never  cast  a  line  in  it  again — two  idle  lads,  in 
short  (as  we  need  not  fear  to  acknowledge  now), 
doing  a  hundred  things  that  the  faculty  never 
heard  of,  or  else  it  had  been  the  worse  for  us, — 
still  it  was  your  prognostic  of  your  friend's  des 
tiny  that  he  was  to  be  a  writer  of  fiction."  From 
this  sylvan  university  Hawthorne  came  home  to 
Salem ;  "  as  if,"  he  wrote  later,  "  Salem  were  for 
me  the  inevitable  centre  of  the  universe." 
•  The  old  witch-hanging  city  had  no  weirder  prod- 


THE  WORKS  OF  NATHANIEL  HAWTHORXE       71 

net  than  this  dark-haired  son.  He  has  certainly 
given  it  an  interest  which  it  must  otherwise  have 
lacked;  but  he  speaks  of  it  with  small  affection, 
considering  that  his  family  had  lived  there  for 
two  centuries.  "  An  unjoyous  attachment,"  he 
calls  it.  And,  to  tell  the  truth,  there  was  evi 
dently  little  love  lost  between  the  little  city  and 
its  most  famous  citizen.  Stories  still  float  in  the 
social  gossip  of  the  town,  which  represent  the  shy 
author  as  inaccessible  to  all  invitations  to  dinner 
and  tea ;  and  while  the  pleasant  circle  awaited  his 
coming  in  the  drawing-room,  the  impracticable  man 
was — at  least  so  runs  the  tale — quietly  hobnobbing 
with  companions  to  whom  his  fame  was  unknown. 
Those  who  coveted  him  as  a  phcenix  could  never 
get  him,  while  he  gave  himself  freely  to  those  who 
saw  in  him  only  a  placid  barn-door  fowl.  The 
sensitive  youth  was  a  recluse,  upon  whose  imagi 
nation  had  fallen  the  gloomy  mystery  of  Puritan 
life  and  character.  Salein  was  the  inevitable  cen 
tre  of  his  universe  more  truly  than  he  thought. 
The  mind  of  Justice  Hathorn's  descendant  was 
bewitched  by  the  fascination  of  a  certain  devilish 
subtlety  working  under  the  comeliest  aspects  in 
human  affairs.  It  overcame  him  with  strange 
sympathy.  It  colored  and  controlled  his  intellect 
ual  life. 
Devoted  all  day  to  lonely  reverie  and  musing 


72  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

upon  the  obscurer  spiritual  passages  of  the  life 
whose  monuments  he  constantly  encountered,  that 
musing  became  inevitably  morbid.  With  the  cre 
ative  instinct  of  the  artist,  he  wrote  the  wild  fan 
cies  into  form  as  stories,  many  of  which,  when 
written>  he  threw  into  the  fire.  Then,  after 
nightfall,  stealing  out  from  his  room  into  the 
silent  streets  of  Salem,  and  shadowy  as  the  ghosts 
with  which  to  his  susceptible  imagination  the 
dusky  town  was  thronged,  he  glided  beneath  the 
house  in  which  the  witch-trials  were  held,  or 
across  the  moonlit  hill  upon  which  the  witches 
were  hung,  until  the  spell  was  complete.  Nor  can 
we  help  fancying  that,  after  the  murder  of  old 
Mr.  White  in  Salem,  which  happened  within  a 
few  years  after  his  return  from  college,  which 
drew  from  Mr.  Webster  his  most  famous  criminal 
plea,  and  filled  a  shadowy  corner  of  every  museum 
in  New  England,  as  every  shivering  little  man  of 
that  time  remembers,  with  an  awful  reproduction 
of  the  scene  in  wax-figures,  with  real  sheets  on  the 
bed,  and  the  murderer,  in  a  glazed  cap,  stooping 
over  to  deal  the  fatal  blow — we  cannot  help  fancy 
ing  that  the  young  recluse  who  walked  by  night, 
the  wizard  whom  as  yet  none  knew,  hovered  about 
the  house,  gazing  at  the  windows  of  the  fatal 
chamber,  and  listening  in  horror  for  the  faint 
.whistle  of  the  confederate  in  another  street. 


THE  WORKS  OF  NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE       73 

Three  years  after  he  graduated,  in  1828,  he 
published  anonymously  a  slight  romance  with  the 
motto  from  Southey,  "Wilt  thon  go  with  me?" 
Hawthorne  never  acknowledged  the  book,  and  it 
is  now  seldom  found;  but  it  shows  plainly  the 
natural  bent  of  his  mind.  It  is  a  dim,  dreamy 
tale,  such  as  a  Byron-struck  youth  of  the  time 
might  have  written,  except  for  that  startling  self- 
possession  of  style  and  cold  analysis  of  passion, 
rather  than  sympathy  with  it,  which  showed  no 
imitation,  but  remarkable  original  power.  The 
same  lurid  gloom  overhangs  it  that  shadows  all 
his  works.  It  is  uncanny ;  the  figures  of  the  ro 
mance  are  not  persons,  they  are  passions,  emo 
tions,  spiritual  speculations.  So  the  Twice-told 
Tales  that  seem  at  first  but  the  pleasant  fancies 
of  a  mild  recluse,  gradually  hold  the  mind  with  a 
Lamia-like  fascination  ;  and  the  author  says  truly 
of  them,  in  the  Preface  of  1S51,  "  Even  in  what 
purport  to  be  pictures  of  actual  life,  we  have  alle 
gory  not  always  so  warmly  dressed  in  its  habili 
ments  of  flesh  and  blood  as  to  be  taken  into  the 
reader's  mind  without  a  shiver."  There  are  sun 
ny  gleams  upon  the  pages,  but  a  strange,  melan 
choly  chill  pervades  the  book.  In  "  The  Wedding 
Knell,"  "  The  Minister's  Black  Veil,"  "  The  Gen- 
tie  Boy,"  "  Wakefield,"  "  The  Prophetic  Pictures," 
"  The  Hollow  of  the  Three  Hills,"  "  Dr.  Heideg- 


74  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

ger's  Experiment,"  "  The  Ambitious  Guest,"  "  The 
White  Old  Maid,"  "Edward  Fane's  Eose-btid," 
"The  Lily's  Quest"— or  in  the  "Legends  of  the 
Province  House,"  where  the  courtly  provincial 
state  of  governors  and  ladies  glitters  across  the 
small,  sad  New  England  world,  whose  very  bald 
ness  jeers  it  to  scorn — there  is  the  same  fateful 
atmosphere  in  which  Goody  Cloyse  might  at  any 
moment  whisk  by  upon  her  broomstick,  and  in 
which  the  startled  heart  stands  still  with  unspeak 
able  terror. 

The  spell  of  mysterious  horror  which  kindled 
Hawthorne's  imagination  was  a  test  of  the  charac 
ter  of  his  genius.  The  mind  of  this  child  of  witch- 
haunted  Salem  loved  to  hover  between  the  natural 
and  the  supernatural,  and  sought  to  tread  the  al 
most  imperceptible  and  doubtful  line  of  contact. 
He  instinctively  sketched  the  phantoms  that  have 
the  figures  of  men,  but  are  not  human ;  the  elu 
sive,  shadowy  scenery  which,  like  that  of  Gustave 
Dore's  pictures,  is  Nature  sympathizing  in  her 
forms  and  aspects  with  the  emotions  of  terror  or 
awe  which  the  tale  excites.  His  genius  broods 
entranced  over  the  evanescent  phantasmagoria  of 
the  vague  debatable  land  in  which  the  realities  of 
experience  blend  with  ghostly  doubts  and  won 
ders. 

But  from  its  poisonous  flowers  what  a  wondrous 


THE  WORKS  OF  XATHAXIEL  HAWTHORNE       75 

perfume  he  distilled !  Through  his  magic  reed, 
into  what  penetrating  melody  he  blew  that  deathly 
air !  His  relentless  fancy  seemed  to  seek  a  sin 
that  was  hopeless,  a  cruel  despair  that  no  faith 
could  throw  off.  Yet  his  naive  and  well-poised 
genius  hung  over  the  gulf  of  blackness,  and  peered 
into  the  pit  with  the  steady  nerve  and  simple  face 
of  a  boy.  The  mind  of  the  reader  follows  him  with 
an  aching  wonder  and  admiration,  as  the  bewil 
dered  old  mother  forester  watched  Undine's  gam 
bols.  As  Hawthorne  describes  Miriam  in  The 
Marble  Faun,  so  may  the  character  of  his  genius 
be  most  truly  indicated.  Miriam,  the  reader  will 
remember,  turns  to  Hilda  and  Kenyon  for  sympa 
thy.  "  Yet  it  was  to  little  purpose  that  she  ap 
proached  the  edge  of  the  voiceless  gulf  between 
herself  and  them.  Standing  on  the  utmost  verge 
of  that  dark  chasm,  she  might  stretch  out  her  hand 
and  never  clasp  a  hand  of  theirs ;  she  might  strive 
to  call  out  l  Help,  friends !  help !'  but,  as  with 
dreamers  when  they  shout,  her  voice  would  perish 
inaudibly  in  the  remoteness  that  seemed  such  a 
little  way.  This  perception  of  an  infinite,  shiver 
ing  solitude,  amid  which  we  cannot  come  close 
enough  to  human  beings  to  be  warmed  by  them, 
and  where  they  turn  to  cold,  chilly  shapes  of 
mist,  is  one  of  the  most  forlorn  results  of  any 
accident,  misfortune,  crime,  or  peculiarity  of 


76  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

character,  that  puts  an  individual  ajar  with  the 
world." 

Thus  it  was  because  the  early  New  England  life 
made  so  much  larger  account  of  the  supernatural 
element  than  any  other  modern  civilized  society, 
that  the  man  whose  blood  had  run  in  its  veins  in 
stinctively  turned  to  it.  But  beyond  this  alluring 
spell  of  its  darker  and  obscurer  individual  experi 
ence,  it  seems  neither  to  have  touched  his  imagi 
nation  nor  even  to  have  aroused  his  interest.  To 
Walter  Scott  the  romance  of  feudalism  was  pre 
cious  for  the  sake  of  feudalism  itself,  in  which  he 
believed  with  all  his  soul,  and  for  that  of  the  he 
roic  old  feudal  figures  which  he  honored.  He  was 
a  Tory  in  every  particle  of  his  frame,  and  his  gen 
ius  made  him  the  poet  of  Toryism.  But  Haw 
thorne  had  apparently  no  especial  political,  relig 
ious,  or  patriotic  affinity  with  the  spirit  which 
inspired  him.  It  was  solely  a  fascination  of  the  in 
tellect.  And  although  he  is  distinctively  the  poet 
of  the  Puritans,  although  it  is  to  his  genius  that 
we  shall  always  owe  that  image  of  them  which 
the  power  of  The  Scarlet  Letter  has  imprinted 
upon  literature,  and  doubtless  henceforth  upon 
historical  interpretation,  yet  what  an  imperfect 
picture  of  that  life  it  is!  All  its  stern  and  mel 
ancholy  romance  is  there — its  picturesque  gloom 
and  intense  passion ;  but  upon  those  quivering 


TEE  WORKS  OF  NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE       77 

pages,  as  in  every  passage  of  his  stories  drawn  from 
that  spirit,  there  seems  to  be  wanting  a  deep,  com 
plete,  sympathetic  appreciation  of  the  fine  moral 
heroism,  the  spiritual  grandeur,  which  overhung 
that  gloomy  life,  as  a  delicate  purple  mist  suffuses 
in  summer  twilights  the  bald  crags  of  the  crystal 
hills.  It  is  the  glare  of  the  scarlet  letter  itself, 
and  all  that  it  luridly  reveals  and  weirdly  implies, 
which  produced  the  tale.  It  was  not  beauty  in 
itself  nor  deformity,  not  virtue  nor  vice,  which 
engaged  the  author's  deepest  sympathy.  It  was 
the  occult  relation  between  the  two.  Thus  while 
the  Puritans  were  of  all  men  pious,  it  was  the  in 
stinct  of  Hawthorne's  genius  to  search  out  and 
trace  with  terrible  tenacity  the  dark  and  devious 
thread  of  sin  in  their  lives. 

Human  life  and  character,  whether  in  Xew  Eng 
land  two  hundred  years  ago  or  in  Italy  to-day, 
interested  him  only  as  they  were  touched  by  this 
glamour  of  sombre  spiritual  mystery ;  and  the  at 
traction  pursued  him  in  every  form  in  which  it 
appeared.  It  is  as  apparent  in  the  most  perfect 
of  his  smaller  tales,  RappacdnV s  Daughter ',  as 
in  The  Scarlet  Letter,  The  Blithedale  Romance, 
The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables,  and  The  Marble 
Faun.  You  may  open  almost  at  random,  and 
you  are  as  sure  to  find  it  as  to  hear  the  ripple 
in  Mozart's  music,  or  the  pathetic  minor  in  a 


78  LITER ARJ  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

Neapolitan  melody.  Take,  for  instance,  The 
Birth-Mark,  which  we  might  call  the  best  of  the 
smaller  stories,  if  we  had  not  just  said  the  same 
thing  of  Rappaccini'' s  Daughter  —  for  so  even 
and  complete  is  Hawthorne's  power,  that,  with 
few  exceptions,  each  work  of  his,  like  Benvenu- 
to's,  seems  the  most  characteristic  and  felicitous. 
In  this  story,  a  scholar  marries  a  beautiful  woman, 
upon  whose  face  is  a  mark  which  has  hitherto 
seemed  to  be  only  a  greater  charm.  Yet  in  one  so 
lovely  the  husband  declares  that,  although  it  is  the 
slightest  possible  defect,  it  is  yet  the  mark  of  earth 
ly  imperfection,  and  he  proceeds  to  lavish  all  the 
resources  of  science  to  procure  its  removal.  But  it 
will  not  disappear ;  and  at  last  he  tells  her  that  the 
crimson  hand  "has  clutched  its  grasp"  into  her 
very  being,  and  that  there  is  mortal  danger  in  try 
ing  the  only  means  of  removal  that  remains.  She 
insists  that  it  shall  be  tried.  It  succeeds;  but  it 
removes  the  stain  and  her  life  together.  So  in 
Rappaccini 's  Daughter.  The  old  philosopher 
nourishes  his  beautiful  child  upon  the  poisonous 
breath  of  a  flower.  She  loves,  and  her  lover  is 
likewise  bewitched.  In  trying  to  break  the  spell, 
she  drinks  an  antidote  which  kills  her.  The  point 
of  interest  in  both  stories  is  the  subtile  connection, 
in  the  first,  between  the  beauty  of  Georgiana  and 
the  taint  of  the  birth-mark;  and,  in  the  second, 


THE  WORKS  OF  NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE       79 

the  loveliness  of  Beatrice  and  the  poison  of  the 
blossom. 

This,  also,  is  the  key  of  his  last  romance,  The 
Marble  Faun,  one  of  the  most  perfect  works  of 
art  in  literature,  whose  marvellous  spell  begins 
with  the  very  opening  words:  "Four  individuals, 
in  whose  fortunes  we  should  be  glad  to  interest 
the  reader,  happened  to  be  standing  in  one  of  the 
saloons  of  the  sculpture-gallery  in  the  Capitol  at 
Rome."  When  these  words  are  read,  the  mind 
familiar  with  Hawthorne  is  already  enthralled. 
What  a  journey  is  beginning,  not  a  step  of  which 
is  trodden,  and  yet  the  heart  palpitates  with  ap 
prehension  !  Through  what  delicate,  rosy  lights 
of  love,  and  soft,  shimmering  humor,  and  hopes 
and  doubts  and  vanishing  delights,  that  journey 
will  proceed,  on  and  on  into  utter  gloom.  And 
it  does  so,  although  "Hilda  had  a  hopeful  soul, 
and  saw  sunlight  on  the  mountain-tops."  It  does 
so,  because  Miriam  and  Donatello  are  the  figures 
which  interest  us  most  profoundly,  and  they  are 
both  lost  in  the  shadow.  Donatello,  indeed,  is  the 
true  centre  of  interest,  as  he  is  one  of  the  most 
striking  creations  of  genius.  But  the  perplexing 
charm  of  Donatello,  what  is  it  but  the  doubt  that 
does  not  dare  to  breathe  itself,  the  appalled  won 
der  whether,  if  the  breeze  should  lift  those  clus 
tering  locks  a  little  higher,  he  would  prove  to  be 


80  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

faun  or  man  ?  It  never  does  lift  them  ;  the  doubt 
is  never  solved,  but  it  is  always  suggested.  The 
mystery  of  a  partial  humanity,  morally  irresponsi 
ble  but  humanly  conscious,  haunts  the  entrancing 
page.  It  draws  us  irresistibly  on.  But  as  the 
cloud  closes  around  the  lithe  figure  of  Donatello, 
we  hear  again  from  its  hidden  folds  the  words  of 
"The  Birth-Mark":  "Thus  ever  does  the  gross 
fatality  of  earth  exult  in  its  invariable  triumph 
over  the  immortal  essence,  which,  in  this  dim 
sphere  of  half -development,  demands  the  com 
pleteness  of  a  higher  state."  Or  still  more  sadly, 
the  mysterious  youth,  half  vanishing  from  our 
sympathy,  seems  to  murmur,  with  Beatrice  Rap- 
paccini,  "  And  still  as  she  spoke,  she  kept  her  hand 
upon  her  heart, — *  Wherefore  didst  thou  inflict  this 
miserable  doom  upon  thy  child  ?' " 

We  have  left  the  story  of  Hawthorne's  life  sadly 
behind.  But  his  life  had  no  more  remarkable 
events  than  holding  office  in  the  Boston  Custom 
house  under  Mr.  Bancroft  as  collector ;  working  for 
some  time  with  the  Brook -Farmers,  from  whom 
he  soon  separated,  not  altogether  amicably ;  mar 
rying  and  living  in  the  Old  Manse  at  Concord  ; 
returning  to  the  Custom-house  in  Salem  as  sur 
veyor;  then  going  to  Lenox,  in  Berkshire,  where 
he  lived  in  what  he  called  "the  ugliest  little  old 
red  farm-house  that  you  ever  saw,"  and  where 


THE  WORKS  OF  NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE      81 

the  story  is  told  of  his  shyness,  that,  if  he  saw 
anybody  coming  along  the  road  whom  he  must 
probably  pass,  he  would  jump  over  the  wall  into 
the  pasture,  and  so  give  the  stranger  a  wide  berth  ; 
back  again  to  Concord ;  then  to  Liverpool  as  con 
sul  ;  travelling  in  Europe  afterwards,  and  home  at 
last  and  forever,  to  "  The  Wayside "  under  the 
Concord  hill.  "  The  hillside,"  he  wrote  to  a  friend 
in  1852,  "is  covered  chiefly  with  locust-trees, 
which  come  into  luxuriant  blossom  in  the  month 
of  June,  and  look  and  smell  very  sweetly,  inter 
mixed  with  a  few  young  elms  and  some  white- 
pines  and  infant  oaks,  the  whole  forming  rather  a 
thicket  than  a  wood.  Nevertheless,  there  is  some 
very  good  shade  to  be  found  there ;  I  spend  de 
lectable  hours  there  in  the  hottest  part  of  the  day, 
stretched  out  at  my  lazy  length  with  a  book  in 
my  hand  or  an  unwritten  book  in  my  thoughts. 
There  is  almost  always  a  breeze  stirring  along  the 
side  or  the  brow  of  the  hill." 

It  is  iiot  strange,  certainly,  that  a  man  such  as 
has  been  described,  of  a  morbid  shyness,  the  path 
of  whose  genius  diverged  always  out  of  the  sun 
into  the  darkest  shade,  and  to  whom  human  beings 
were  merely  psychological  phenomena,  should  have 
been  accounted  ungenial,  and  sometimes  even  hard, 
cold,  and  perverse.  From  the  bent  of  his  intel 
lectual  temperament  it  happens  that  in  his  sim- 


82  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

plest  and  sweetest  passages  lie  still  seems  to  be 
studying  and  curiously  observing,  rather  than  sym 
pathizing.  You  cannot  help  feeling  constantly 
that  the  author  is  looking  askance  both  at  his 
characters  and  you,  the  reader  ;  and  many  a  young 
and  fresh  mind  is  troubled  strangely  by  his  books, 
as  if  it  were  aware  of  a  half -Mephistophelean 
smile  upon  the  page.  Nor  is  this  impression  alto 
gether  removed  by  the  remarkable  familiarity  of 
his  personal  disclosures.  There  was  never  a  man 
more  shrinkingly  retiring,  yet  surely  never  was  an 
author  more  naively  frank.  He  is  willing  that  you 
should  know  all  that  a  man  may  fairly  reveal  of 
himself.  The  great  interior  story  he  does  not  tell, 
of  course,  but  the  Introduction  to  the  Mosses 
from  an  Old  Manse,  the  opening  chapter  of 
The  Scarlet  Letter,  and  the  Consular  Experiences, 
with  much  of  the  rest  of  Our  Old  Home,  are  as 
intimate  and  explicit  chapters  of  autobiography 
as  can  be  found.  Nor  would  it  be  easy  to  find 
anywhere  a  more  perfect  idyl  than  that  introduc 
tory  chapter  of  the  Mosses.  Its  charm  is  peren 
nial  and  indescribable ;  and  why  should  it  not  be, 
since  it  was  written  at  a  time  in  which,  as  he  says, 
"I  was  happy  "?  It  is,  perhaps,  the  most  softly- 
hued  and  exquisite  work  of  his  pen.  So  the 
sketch  of  "The  Custom-house,"  although  prefa 
tory  to  that  most  tragically  powerful  of  romances, 


THE  WORKS  OF  NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE       83 

The  Scarlet  Letter,  is  an  incessant  play  of  the  shy 
est  and  most  airy  humor.  It  is  like  the  war 
bling  of  bobolinks  before  a  thunder-burst.  How 
many  other  men,  however  unreserved  with  the 
pen,  would  be  likely  to  dare  to  paint,  with  the 
fidelity  of  Teniers  and  the  simplicity  of  Fra  An- 
gelico,  a  picture  of  the  office  and  the  companions 
in  which  and  with  whom  they  did  their  daily 
work?  The  surveyor  of  customs  in  the  port  of 
Salem  treated  the  town  of  Salem,  in  which  he 
lived  and  discharged  his  daily  task,  as  if  it  had 
been,  with  all  its  people,  as  vague  and  remote  a 
spot  as  the  town  of  which  he  was  about  to  treat 
in  the  story.  He  commented  upon  the  place 
and  the  people  as  modern  travellers  in  Pom 
peii  discuss  the  ancient  town.  It  made  a  great 
scandal.  He  was  accused  of  depicting  with  un 
pardonable  severity  worthy  folks,  whose  friends 
were  sorely  pained  and  indignant.  But  he  wrote 
such  sketches  as  he  wrote  his  stories.  He  treated 
his  companions  as  he  treated  himself  and  all  the 
personages  in  history  or  experience  with  which  he 
dealt,  merely  as  phenomena  to  be  analyzed  and 
described,  with  no  more  private  malice  or  personal 
emotion  than  the  sun,  which  would  have  photo 
graphed  them,  warts  and  all. 

Thus  it  was  that  the  great  currents  of  human 
sympathy  never  swept  him  away.     The  character 


84  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

of  his  genius  isolated  him,  and  he  stood  aloof  from 
the  common  interests.  Intent  upon  studying  men 
in  certain  aspects,  he  cared  little  for  man ;  and  the 
high  tides  of  collective  emotion  among  his  fellows 
left  him  dry  and  untouched.  So  he  beholds  and 
describes  the  generous  impulse  of  humanity  with 
sceptical  courtesy  rather  than  with  hopeful  cordi 
ality. 

He  does  not  chide  you  if  you  spend  effort  and 
life  itself  in  the  ardent  van  of  progress,  but  he 
asks  simply,  "  Is  six  so  much  better  than  half  a 
dozen  ?"  He  will  not  quarrel  with  you  if  you  ex 
pect  the  millennium  to-morrow.  He  only  says, 
with  that  glimmering  smile,  "  So  soon  ?"  Yet  in 
all  this  there  was  no  shadow  of  spiritual  pride. 
Nay,  so  far  from  this,  that  the  tranquil  and  per 
vasive  sadness  of  all  Hawthorne's  writings,  the 
kind  of  heartache  that  they  leave  behind,  seem 
to  spring  from  the  fact  that  his  nature  was  related 
to  the  moral  world,  as  his  own  Donatello  was  to 
the  human.  "  So  alert,  so  alluring,  so  noble," 
muses  the  heart  as  we  climb  the  Apennines 
towards  the  tower  of  Monte  Beni ;  "  alas !  is  he 
human  ?"  it  whispers,  with  a  pang  of  doubt. 

How  this  directed  his  choice  of  subjects,  and 
affected  his  treatment  of  them,  when  drawn  from 
early  history,  we  have  already  seen.  It  is  not, 
therefore,  surprising,  that  the  history  into  which 


THE  WORKS  OF  NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE      85 

be  was  born   interested   him  only   in   the   same 
way. 

"When  he  went  to  Europe  as  consul,  Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin  was  already  published,  and  the  country  shook 
with  the  fierce  debate  which  involved  its  life.  Yet 
eight  years  later  Hawthorne  wrote  with  calm  en 
nui,  "  No  author,  without  a  trial,  can  conceive  of 
the  difficulty  of  writing  a  romance  about  a  coun 
try  where  there  is  no  shadow,  no  antiquity,  no 
mystery,  no  picturesque  and  gloomy  wrong,  nor 
anything  but  a  commonplace  prosperity,  in  broad 
and  simple  daylight,  as  is  happily  the  case  with 
my  dear  native  land."  Is  crime  never  romantic, 
then,  until  distance  ennobles  it?  Or  were  the 
tragedies  of  Puritan  life  so  terrible  that  the  im 
agination  could  not  help  kindling,  while  the  pangs 
of  the  plantation  are  superficial  and  commonplace  ? 
Charlotte  Bronte,  Dickens,  and  Thackeray  were 
able  to  find  a  shadow  even  in  "  merrie  England." 
But  our  great  romancer  looked  at  the  American 
life  of  his  time  with  these  marvellous  eyes,  and 
could  see  only  monotonous  sunshine.  That  the 
devil,  in  the  form  of  an  elderly  man  clad  in  grave 
and  decent  attire,  should  lead  astray  the  saints  of 
Salem  village,  two  centuries  ago,  and  confuse  right 
and  wrong  in  the  mind  of  Goodman  Brown,  was 
something  that  excited  his  imagination,  and  pro 
duced  one  of  his  weirdest  stories.  But  that  the 


86  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

same  devil,  clad  in  a  sombre  sophism,  was  con 
fusing  the  sentiment  of  right  and  wrong  in  the 
mind  of  his  own  countrymen  he  did  not  even 
guess.  The  monotonous  sunshine  disappeared  in 
the  blackest  storm.  The  commonplace  prosper 
ity  ended  in  tremendous  war.  What  other  man 
of  equal  power,  who  was  not  intellectually  consti 
tuted  precisely  as  Hawthorne  was,  could  have 
stood  merely  perplexed  and  bewildered,  harassed 
by  the  inability  of  positive  sympathy,  in  the  vast 
conflict  which  tosses  us  all  in  its  terrible  vortex? 

In  political  theories  and  in  an  abstract  view  of 
war  men  may  differ.  But  this  war  is  not  to  be 
dismissed  as  a  political  difference.  Here  is  an  at 
tempt  to  destroy  the  government  of  a  country, 
not  because  it  oppressed  any  man,  but  because  its 
evident  tendency  was  to  secure  universal  justice 
under  law.  It  is,  therefore,  a  conspiracy  against 
human  nature.  Civilization  itself  is  at  stake; 
and  the  warm  blood  of  the  noblest  youth  is  every 
where  flowing  in  as  sacred  a  cause  as  history  re 
cords — flowing  not  merely  to  maintain  a  certain 
form  of  government,  but  to  vindicate  the  rights 
of  human  nature.  Shall  there  not  be  sorrow  and 
pain,  if  a  friend  is  merely  impatient  or  confounded 
by  it — if  he  sees  in  it  only  danger  or  doubt,  and 
not  hope  for  the  right — or  if  he  seem  to  insinuate 
that  it  would  have  been  better  if  the  war  had  been 


THE  WORKS  OF  NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE        87 

avoided,  even  at  that  countless  cost  to  human  wel 
fare  by  which  alone  the  avoidance  was  possible? 

Yet,  if  the  view  of  Hawthorne's  mental  consti 
tution  which  has  been  suggested  be  correct,  this 
attitude  of  his,  however  deeply  it  may  be  regret 
ted,  can  hardly  deserve  moral  condemnation.  He 
knew  perfectly  well  that  if  a  man  has  no  ear  for 
music  he  had  better  not  try  to  sing.  But  the  dan 
ger  with  such  men  is  that  they  are  apt  to  doubt 
if  music  itself  be  not  a  vain  delusion.  This  dan 
ger  Hawthorne  escaped.  There  is  none  of  the 
shallow  persiflage  of  the  sceptic  in  his  tone,  nor 
any  affectation  of  cosmopolitan  superiority.  Mr. 
Edward  Dicey,  in  his  interesting  reminiscences  of 
Hawthorne,  published  in  Macmillarf  s  Magazine, 
illustrates  this  very  happily. 

"  To  make  his  position  intelligible,  let  me  repeat  an  anec 
dote  which  was  told  me  by  a  very  near  friend  of  his  and  mine, 
•who  had  heard  it  from  President  Pierce  himself.  Frank 
Pierce  had  been,  and  was  to  the  day  of  Hawthorne's  death, 
one  of  the  oldest  of  his  friends.  At  the  time  of  the  Presiden 
tial  election  of  1856,  Hawthorne,  for  once,  took  part  in  poli 
tics,  wrote  a  pamphlet  in  favor  of  his  friend,  and  took  a  most 
unusual  interest  in  his  success.  When  the  result  of  the  nom 
ination  was  known,  and  Pierce  was  President-elect,  Haw 
thorne  was  among  the  first  to  come  and  wish  him  joy.  He 
sat  down  in  the  room  moodily  and  silently,  as  he  was  wont 
when  anything  troubled  him  ;  then,  without  speaking  a  word, 
he  shook  Pierce  warmly  by  the  hand,  and  at  last  remarked, 
'  Ah,  Frank,  what  a  pity  !'  The  moment  the  victory  was  won, 
that  timid,  hesitating  mind  saw  the  evils  of  the  successful 
course — the  advantages  of  the  one  which  had  not  been  fol- 


88  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

lowed.  So  it  was  always.  Of  two  lines  of  action,  he  was 
perpetually  in  doubt  which  was  the  best ;  and  so,  between 
the  two,  he  always  inclined  to  letting  things  remain  as  they 
are. 

"Nobody  disliked  slavery  more  cordially  than  he  did; 
and  yet  the  difficulty  of  what  was  to  be  done  with  the  slaves 
weighed  constantly  upon  his  mind.  He  told  me  once  that, 
while  he  had  been  consul  at  Liverpool,  a  vessel  arrived  there 
with  a  number  of  negro  sailors,  who  had  been  brought  from 
slave  States,  and  would,  of  course,  be  enslaved  again  on  their 
return.  He  fancied  that  he  ought  to  inform  the  men  of  the  fact, 
but  then  he  was  stopped  by  the  reflection — who  was  to  pro 
vide  for  them  if  they  became  free  ?  and,  as  he  said,  with  a 
sigh,  '  while  I  was  thinking,  the  vessel  sailed. '  So,  I  recollect, 
on  the  old  battle-field  of  Manassas,  in  which  I  strolled  in  com 
pany  with  Hawthorne,  meeting  a  batch  of  runaway  slaves — 
weary,  foot-sore,  wretched,  and  helpless  beyond  conception  ; 
we  gave  them  food  and  wine,  some  small  sums  of  money,  and 
got  them  a  lift  upon  a  train  going  northward  ;  but  not  long 
afterwards  Hawthorne  turned  to  me  with  the  remark,  'I  am 
not  sure  we  were  doing  right  after  all.  How  can  these  poor 
beings  find  food  and  shelter  away  from  home  ?'  Thus  this 
ingrained  and  inherent  doubt  incapacitated  him  from  follow 
ing  any  course  vigorously.  He  thought,  on  the  whole,  that 
Wendell  Phillips  and  Lloyd  Garrison  and  the  Abolitionists 
were  in  the  right,  but  then  he  was  never  quite  certain  that 
they  were  not  in  the  wrong  after  all ;  so  that  his  advocacy  of 
their  cause  was  of  a  very  uncertain  character.  He  saw  the 
best,  to  alter  slightly  the  famous  Horatian  line,  but  he  never 
could  quite  make  up  his  mind  whether  he  altogether  approved 
of  its  wisdom,  and  therefore  followed  it  but  falteringly. 

" '  Better  to  bear  those  ills  we  have, 

Than  fly  to  others  that  we  know  not  of,' 

expressed  the  philosophy  to  which  Hawthorne  was  thus  borne 
imperceptibly.  Unjustly,  but  yet  not  unreasonably,  he  was 
looked  upon  as  a  pro-slavery  man,  and  suspected  of  Southern 
sympathies.  In  politics  he  was  always  halting  between  two 
opinions  ;  or,  rather,  holding  one  opinion,  he  could  never 
summon  up  his  courage  to  adhere  to  it  and  it  only." 


THE  WORKS  OF 


:  frf   jnwTffOKVr     -»< 

J\l£Li    MA  \\JL21UlL~\L,  ^[ 

V  *»  .  .      WF  >A 


The  truth  is  that  his  own  times  and  their  peo 
ple  and  their  affairs  were  just  as  shadowy  to  him 
as  those  of  any  of  his  stories,  arid  his  mind  held 
the  same  curious,  half-wistful  poise  among  all  the 
conflicts  of  principle  and  passion  around  him,  as 
among  those  of  which  he  read  and  mused.  If  you 
ask  why  this  was  so — how  it  was  that  the  tragedy 
of  an  old  Italian  garden,  or  the  sin  of  a  lonely  Pu 
ritan  parish,  or  the  crime  of  a  provincial  judge, 
should  so  stimulate  his  imagination  with  romantic 
appeals  and  harrowing  allegories,  while  either  it 
did  not  see  a  Carolina  slave -pen,  or  found 'in  it 
only  a  tame  prosperity — you  must  take  your  an 
swer  in  the  other  question,  why  he  did  not  weave 
into  any  of  his  stories  the  black  and  bloody  thread 
of  the  Inquisition.  His  genius  obeyed  its  law. 
When  he  wrote  like  a  disembodied  intelligence  of 
events  with  which  his  neighbors'  hearts  were  quiv 
ering — when  the  same  half-smile  flutters  upon  his 
lips  in  the  essay  About  War  Matters,  sketched 
as  it  were  upon  the  battle-field,  as  in  that  upon 
Fire  Worship,  written  in  the  rural  seclusion  of 
the  mossy  Manse — ah  me!  it  is  Donatello,  in  his 
tower  of  Monte  Beni,  contemplating  with  doubt 
ful  interest  the  field  upon  which  the  flower  of  men 
are  dying  for  an  idea.  Do  you  wonder,  as  you 
see  him  and  hear  him,  that  your  heart,  bewildered, 
asks  and  asks  again, "  Is  he  human  ?  Is  he  a  man  ?" 


90  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

Now  that  Hawthorne  sleeps  by  the  tranquil 
Concord,  upon  whose  shores  the  Old  Manse  was 
his  bridal  bower,  those  who  knew  him  chiefly 
there  revert  beyond  the  angry  hour  to  those 
peaceful  days.  How  dear  the  Old  Manse  was  to 
him  he  has  himself  recorded  ;  and  in  the  opening 
of  the  Tanglewood  Tales  he  pays  his  tribute  to 
that  placid  landscape,  which  will  always  be  re 
called  with  pensive  tenderness  by  those  who,  like 
him,  became  familiar  with  it  in  happy  hours. 
"  To  me,"  he  writes,  "  there  is  a  peculiar,  quiet 
charm  in  these  broad  meadows  and  gentle  emi 
nences.  They  are  better  than  mountains,  because 
they  do  not  stamp  and  stereotype  themselves  into 
the  brain,  and  thus  grow  wearisome  with  the  same 
strong  impression,  repeated  day  after  day.  A  few 
summer  weeks  among  mountains,  a  lifetime  among 
green  meadows  and  placid  slopes,  with  outlines 
forever  new,  because  continually  fading  out  of  the 
memory,  such  would  be  my  sober  choice."  He 
used  to  say,  in  those  days  —  when,  as  he  was 
fond  of  insisting,  he  was  the  obscurest  author 
in  the  world,  because,  although  he  had  told 
his  tales  twice,  nobody  cared  to  listen  —  that 
he  never  knew  exactly  how  he  contrived  to  live. 
But  he  was  then  married,  and  the  dullest  eye 
could  not  fail  to  detect  the  feminine  grace  and 
taste  that  ordered  the  dwelling,  and  perceive 


THE  WORKS  OF  NATHAXIEL  HA.WTHORXE        91 

the    tender   sagacity  that   made   all   things  pos 
sible. 

Such  was  his  simplicity  and  frugality  that, 
when  he  was  left  alone  for  a  little  time  in  his 
Arcadia,  he  would  dismiss  "  the  help,"  and,  with 
some  friend  of  other  days  who  came  to  share  his 
loneliness,  he  cooked  the  easy  meal,  and  washed 
up  the  dishes.  Ko  picture  is  clearer  in  the  mem 
ory  of  a  certain  writer  than  that  of  the  magician, 
in  whose  presence  he  almost  lost  his  breath,  look 
ing  at  him  over  a  dinner -plate  which  he  was 
gravely  wiping  in  the  kitchen,  while  the  handy 
friend,  who  had  been  a  Western  settler,  scoured 
the  kettle  at  the  door.  Blithedale,  where  their 
acquaintance  had  begun,  had  not  allowed  either 
of  them  to  forget  how  to  help  himself.  It  was 
amusing  to  one  who  knew  this  native  indepen 
dence  of  Hawthorne,  to  hear,  some  years  after 
wards,  that  he  wrote  the  "  campaign "  Life  of 
Franklin  Pierce  for  the  sake  of  getting  an  office. 
That  such  a  man  should  do  such  a  work  was  possi 
bly  incomprehensible  to  those  who  did  not  know 
him  upon  any  other  supposition,  until  the  fact 
was  known  that  Mr.  Pierce  was  an  old  and  con 
stant  friend.  Then  it  was  explained.  Hawthorne 
asked  simply  how  he  could  help  his  friend,  and 
he  did  the  only  thing  he  could  do  for  that  pur 
pose.  But  although  he  passed  some  years  in  pub- 


92  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

lie  office,  he  had  neither  taste  nor  talent  for  po 
litical  life.  He  owed  his  offices  to  works  quite 
other  than  political.  His  first  and  second  ap 
pointments  were  virtually  made  by  his  friend  Mr. 
Bancroft,  and  the  third  by  his  friend  Mr.  Pierce. 
His  claims  were  perceptible  enough  to  friendship, 
but  would  hardly  have  been  so  to  a  caucus. 

In  this  brief  essay  we  have  aimed  only  to  indi 
cate  the  general  character  of  the  genius  of  Haw 
thorne,  and  to  suggest  a  key  to  his  peculiar  rela 
tion  to  his  time.  The  reader  will  at  once  see  that 
it  is  rather  the  man  than  the  author  who  has  been 
described ;  but  this  has  been  designedly  done,  for 
we  confess  a  personal  solicitude,  shared,  we  are 
very  sure,  by  many  friends  of  Nathaniel  Haw 
thorne,  that  there  shall  not  be  wanting  to  the 
future  student  of  his  works  such  light  as  acquaint 
ance  with  the  man  may  throw  upon  them,  as  well 
as  some  picture  of  the  impression  his  personality 
made  upon  his  contemporaries. 

Strongly  formed,  of  dark,  poetic  gravity  of  as 
pect,  lighted  by  the  deep,  gleaming  eye  that  re 
coiled  with  girlish  coyness  from  contact  with  your 
gaze ;  of  rare  courtesy  and  kindliness  in  personal 
intercourse,  yet  so  sensitive  that  his  look  and  man 
ner  can  be  suggested  by  the  word  "glimmering;" 
giving  you  a  sense  of  restrained  impatience  to  be 
away ;  mostly  silent  in  society,  and  speaking  al- 


THE  WORKS  OF  NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE       93 

ways  with  an  appearance  of  effort,  but  with  a 
lambent  light  of  delicate  humor  playing  over  all 
he  said  in  the  confidence  of  familiarity,  and  firm 
self-possession  under  all,  as  if  the  glimmering 
manner  were  only  the  tremulous  surface  of  the 
sea,  Hawthorne  was  personally  known  to  few,  and 
intimately  to  very  few.  But  no  one  knew  him 
without  loving  him,  or  saw  him  without  remem 
bering  him  ;  and  the  name  Nathaniel  Hawthorne, 
which,  when  it  was  first  written,  was  supposed  to 
be  fictitious,  is  now  one  of  the  most  enduring 
facts  of  English  literature. 


RACHEL 


EACHEL 

ONE  evening  in  Paris,  we  were  strolling  through 
that  most  Parisian  spot  the  Palais  Royal,  or,  as  it 
was  called  at  that  moment,  the  Palais  National. 
It  was  after  the  revolution  of  February ;  but,  al 
though  the  place  was  full  of  associations  with 
French  revolutions,  it  seemed  to  have  no  special 
sympathy  with  the  trouble  of  the  moment,  and 
was  as  gay  as  the  youngest  imagination  conceives 
Paris  to  be.  There  was  a  constant  throng  loitering 
along  the  arcades;  the  cafes  were  lighted  and 
crowded  ;  men  were  smoking,  sipping  coffee,  play 
ing  billiards,  reading  the  newspapers,  discuss 
ing  the  debates  in  the  Chamber  and  the  coming 
"  Prophete  "  of  Meyerbeer  at  the  opera ;  women 
were  chatting  together  in  the  boutiques,  pretty 
grisettes  hurrying  home;  little  blanchisseuses,  with 
their  neatly -napkinned  baskets,  tripping  among 
the  crowd ;  strangers  watched  the  gay  groups, 
paused  at  the  windows  of  tailors  and  jewellers, 
and  felt  the  fascination  of  Paris.  It  was  the  mo 
ment  of  high-tide  of  Parisian  life.  It  was  an  epit- 


98  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

ome  of  Paris,  and  Paris  is  an  epitome  of  the  time 
and  of  the  world. 

At  the  corner  of  the  Palais  Royal  is  the  Gome- 
die  Franchise,  and  to  that  we  were  going.  There 
Rachel  was  playing.  There  she  had  recently  re 
cited  the  "Marseillaise"  to  frenzied  Paris;  and 
there,  in  the  vestibule,  genius  of  French  comedy, 
of  French  intellect,  and  of  French  life,  sits  the 
wonderful  Voltaire  of  Houdon,  the  statue  which, 
for  the  first  time,  after  the  dreadful  portraits  which 
misrepresent  him,  gives  the  spectator  some  ade 
quate  idea  of  the  personal  appearance  and  impres 
sion  of  the  man  who  moulded  an  age.  You  can 
scarcely  see  the  statue  without  a  shudder.  It  is 
remorseless  intellect  laid  bare.  The  cold  sweet 
ness  of  the  aspect,  the  subtle  penetration  of  the 
brow,  the  passionless  supremacy  of  a  figure  which 
is  neither  manly  nor  graceful,  fill  your  mind  with 
apprehension  and  with  the  conviction  that  the 
French  Revolution  you  have  seen  is  not  the  last. 

The  curtain  rises,  and  Paris  and  France  roll 
away.  A  sad,  solitary  figure,  like  a  dream  of 
tragic  Greece,  glides  across  the  scene.  The  air 
grows  cold  and  thin,  with  a  sense  of  the  presence 
of  lost  antiquity.  The  feeling  of  fate,  vast,  resist 
less,  and  terrible,  rises  like  a  suffocating  vapor; 
and  the  hopeless  woe  of  the  face,  the  pathetic  dig 
nity  of  the  form,  assure  you,  before  she  speaks, 


RACHEL  99 

that  tins  is  indeed  Rachel.  The  scenery  is  poor 
and  hard ;  but  its  severe  outlines  and  its  conven 
tional  character  serve  to  suggest  Greece.  The 
drapery  which  hangs  upon  Rachel  is  exquisitely 
studied  from  the  most  perfect  statue.  There  is 
not  a  fold  which  is  not  Greek  and  graceful,  and 
which  does  not  seem  obedient  to  the  same  law 
which  touches  her  face  with  tragedy.  As  she 
slowly  opens  her  thin  lips,  your  own  blanch;  and 
from  her  melancholy  eyes  all  smiles  and  possi 
bility  of  joy  have  utterly  passed  away.  Rachel 
stands  alone,  a  solitary  statue  of  fate  and  woe. 

When  she  speaks,  the  low,  thrilling,  distinct 
voice  seems  to  proceed  rather  from  her  eyes  than 
her  mouth.  It  has  a  wan  sound,  if  we  may  say 
so.  It  is  the  very  tone  you  would  have  predicted 
as  coming  from  that  form,  like  the  unearthly  mu 
sic  which  accompanies  the  speech  of  the  Com- 
mendatore's  statue  in  "Don  Giovanni."  That  ap 
pearance  and  that  voice  are  the  key  of  the  whole 
performance.  Before  she  has  spoken,  you  are  filled 
with  the  spirit  of  an  age  infinitely  remote,  and  only 
related  to  human  sympathy  now  by  the  grandeur 
of  suffering.  The  rest  merely  confirms  that  im 
pression.  The  whole  is  simple  and  intense.  It 
is  conceived  and  fulfilled  in  the  purest  sense  of 
Greek  art. 

Of  the  early  career  and  later  life  of  Rachel 


100  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

such  romantic  stories  are  told  and  believed  that 
only  to  see  the  heroine  of  her  own  life  would  be 
attraction  enough  to  draw  the  world  to  Paris. 
Dr.  Vernon,  in  his  Memoir es  d?un  Bourgeois,  has 
described  her  earliest  appearance  upon  the  Boule 
vards — her  studies,  her  trials,  and  her  triumph. 
That  triumph  has  been  unequalled  in  stage  annals 
for  enthusiasm  and  permanence.  Other  actors 
have  achieved  single  successes  as  brilliant;  but  no 
other  has  held  for  so  long  the  most  fickle  and  fas 
tidious  nation  thrall  to  her  powers;  owning  no 
rival  near  the  throne,  and  ruling  with  a  sway 
whose  splendor  was  only  surpassed  by  its  stern 
ness. 

For  Rachel  has  never  sought  to  ally  her  genius 
to  goodness,  and  has  rather  despised  than  courted 
the  aid  of  noble  character.  Not  a  lady  by  birth 
or  breeding,  she  is  reported  to  have  surpassed  Mes- 
salina  in  debauchery  and  Semiramis  in  luxury. 
Paris  teems  with  tales  of  her  private  life,  which, 
while  they  are  undoubtedly  exaggerated,  yet  serve 
to  show  the  kind  of  impression  her  career  has  pro 
duced.  Those  modern  Sybarites,  the  princes  and 
nobles  of  Russia,  are  the  heroes  of  her  private  ro 
mances;  and  her  sumptuous  apartments,  if  not  a 
Tour  de  Nesle,  are  at  least  a  bower  of  Rosamond. 

As  if  to  show  the  independent  superiority  of  her 
art,  she  has  been  willing  to  appear,  or  she  really 


RACHEL  101 

is,  avaricious,  mean,  jealous,  passionate,  false ;  and 
then,  by  her  prodigious  power,  she  has  swayed  the 
public  that  so  judged  her  as  the  wind  tosses  a  leaf. 
There  has,  alas,  been  disdain  in  her  superiority. 
Perhaps  Paris  has  found  something  fascinating 
in  her  very  contempt,  as  in  the  Memoires  du  Dia- 
Ue  the  heroine  confesses  that  she  loved  the  ferocity 
of  her  lover.  Nor  is  it  a  traditional  fame  that  she 
has  enjoyed ;  but  whenever  Rachel  plays,  the  the 
atre  is  crowded,  and  the  terror  and  the  tears  are 
what  they  were  when  she  began. 

Rachel  is  the  greatest  of  merely  dramatic  artists. 
Others  are  more  beautiful ;  others  are  more  state 
ly  and  imposing ;  others  have  been  fitted  by  exter 
nal  gifts  of  nature  to  personify  characters  of  very 
marked  features ;  others  are  more  graceful  and 
lovely  and  winning;  most  others  mingle  their 
own  personality  with  the  characters  they  assume, 
but  Rachel  has  this  final  evidence  of  genius,  that 
she  is  always  superior  to  what  she  does ;  her  mind 
presides  over  her  own  performances.  It  is  the 
perfection  of  art.  In  describing  this  peculiar  su 
premacy  of  genius,  a  scholar,  in  whose  early  death 
a  poet  and  philosopher  was  lost,  says  of  Shake 
speare  :  "  He  sat  pensive  and  alone  above  the  hun 
dred-handed  play  of  his  imagination."  And  Fanny 
Kemble,  in  her  journal,  describes  a  conversation 
upon  the  stage,  in  the  tomb-scene  of  "  Romeo  and 


102  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

Juliet,"  where  she,  as  Juliet,  says  to  Mr.  Romeo 
Keppel,  "  Where  the  devil  is  your  dagger  ?"  while 
all  the  tearful  audience  are  lost  in  the  soft  woe 
of  the  scene. 

This  is  very  much  opposed  to  the  general  theory 
of  acting,  and  the  story  is  told  with  great  gusto  of 
a  boy  who  was  sent  to  see  Garrick,  we  believe,  and 
who  was  greatly  delighted  with  the  fine  phrasing 
and  swagger  of  a  supernumerary,  but  could  not 
understand  why  people  applauded  such  an  ordi 
nary  bumpkin  as  Garrick,  who  did  not  differ  a  whit 
from  all  the  country  boobies  he  had  ever  seen.  It 
is  insisted  that  the  actor  must  persuade  the  spec 
tator  that  he  is  what  he  seems  to  be,  and  this  is 
gravely  put  as  the  first  and  final  proof  of  good 
acting. 

This  is,  however,  both  a  false  view  of  art  and  a 
false  interpretation  and  observation  of  experience. 
Shakespeare,  through  the  mouth  of  Hamlet,  tells 
the  players  to  "  hold  the  mirror  up  to  nature  " — 
that  is,  to  represent  nature.  For  what  is  the  dra 
matic  art,  like  all  other  arts,  but  a  representation  ? 
If  it  aims  to  deceive  the  eye — if  it  tries  to  juggle 
the  senses  of  the  spectator — it  is  as  trivial  as  if  a 
painte.r  should  put  real  gold  upon  his  canvas  in 
stead  of  representing  gold  by  means  of  paint ;  or 
as  if  a  sculptor  should  tinge  the  cheeks  of  his 
statue  to  make  it  more  like  a  human  face.  We 


RACHEL  103 

have  seen  tin  pans  so  well  represented  in  painting 
that  the  result  was  atrocious.  For,  if  the  object 
intended  is  really  a  tin  pan,  and  not  the  pleasure 
produced  by  a  conscious  representation  of  one, 
then  why  not  insert  the  veritable  pan  in  the 
picture  at  once?  If  art  is  only  a  more  or  less 
successful  imitation  of  natural  objects,  with  a 
view  to  cheat  the  senses,  it  is  an  amusing  game, 
but  it  is  not  a  noble  pursuit. 

It  is  an  equally  false  observation  of  experience; 
because,  if  the  spectator  were  really  deceived,  if 
the  actor  became,  in  the  mind  of  the  audience, 
truly  identical  with  the  character  he  represents, 
then,  when  that  character  was  odious,  the  audience 
would  revolt.  If  we  cannot  quietly  sit  and  see 
one  dog  tear  another,  without  interfering,  could 
we  gravely  look  on  and  only  put  our  handkerchiefs 
to  our  eyes,  when  Othello  puts  the  pillow  to  the 
mouth  of  Desdemona?  If  we  really  supposed 
him  to  be  a  murderous  man,  how  instantly  we 
should  leap  upon  the  stage  and  rescue  "  the  gentle 
lady."  The  truth  is,  to  state  it  boldly,  we  know 
the  roaring  lion  to  be  only  Snug,  the  joiner. 

All  works  of  art  must  produce  pleasure.  Even 
the  sternest  and  most  repulsive  subjects  must  be 
touched  by  art  into  a  pensive  beauty,  or  they  fail 
to  reach  the  height  of  great  works.  Goethe  has 
shown  this  in  the  Laocoon,  and  every  man  feels  it 


104  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

in  constant  experience.  One  of  the  grand  themes 
of  modern  painting  is  the  great  tragedy  of  history, 
the  Crucifixion.  Materially  it  is  repulsive,  as  the 
spectacle  of  a  man  in  excruciating  bodily  torture ; 
spiritually  it  is  overwhelming,  as  the  symbolized 
suffering  of  God  for  sin.  If,  now,  the  pictures 
which  treat  this  subject  were  indeed  only  imita 
tions  of  the  scene,  so  that  the  spectator  listened  for 
the  groans  of  agony  and  looked  to  see  the  blood 
drop  from  the  brow  crowned  with  thorns,  how 
hideous  and  insupportable  the  sight  would  be! 
The  mind  is  conscious  as  it  contemplates  the  pict 
ure  that  it  is  a  representation,  and  not  a  fact. 
The  mere  force  of  actuality  is,  therefore,  destroyed, 
and  thought  busies  itself  with  the  moral  signifi 
cance  of  the  scene.  In  the  same  way,  in  the  trag 
edy  of  "  Othello,"  conscious  that  there  is  not  the 
actual  physical  suffering  which  there  seems  to  be, 
the  mind  contemplates  the  real  meaning  which 
underlies  that  appearance,  and  curses  jealousy  and 
the  unmanly  passions. 

Even  in  a  very  low  walk  of  art  the  same  princi 
ple  is  manifested.  A  man  might  not  care  to  adorn 
his  parlor  with  the  carcass  of  an  ox  or  a  hog,  nor 
invite  to  his  table  boors  muzzy  with  beer.  But 
the  most  elegant  of  nations  prizes  the  pictures  of 
Teniers  at  extraordinary  prices,  and  hangs  its  gal 
leries  with  works  minutely  representing  the  sham- 


RACHEL  105 

bles.  Here,  again,  the  explanation  is  this:  that 
the  mind,  rejecting  any  idea  of  actuality  in  the 
picture,  is  charmed  with  the  delicacy  of  detail, 
with  lovely  color,  with  tone,  with  tenderness,  and 
all  these  are  qualities  inseparable  from  the  picture, 
and  do  not  belong  by  any  necessity  to  the  actual 
carcasses  of  animals.  In  the  shambles,  the  sense 
of  disgust  and  repulsion  overcomes  any  pleasure 
in  light  and  color.  In  the  parlor,  if  the  spectator 
were  persuaded  by  the  picture  to  hold  his  nose, 
the  thing  would  be  as  unlovely  as  it  is  in  nature. 
Imitation  pleases  only  so  far  as  it  is  known  to 
be  imitation.  If  deception  by  imitation  were  the 
object  of  art,  then  the  material  of  the  sculptor 
should  be  wax,  and  not  marble.  Every  visitor 
mistakes  the  sitting  figure  of  Cobbett,  in  Madame 
Tussaud's  collection  of  wax-works,  for  a  real  man, 
and  will  very  likely,  as  we  did,  speak  to  it.  But 
who  would  accost  the  Moses  of  Michael  Angelo, 
or  believe  the  sitting  Medici  in  his  chapel  to  have 
speech  ? 

There  is  something  unhandsomely  derogatory 
to  art  in  this  common  view.  It  is  forgotten  that 
art  is  not  subsidiary  nor  auxiliary  to  nature,  but 
it  is  a  distinct  ministry,  and  has  a  world  of  its 
own.  They  are  not  in  opposition,  nor  do  they 
clash.  The  cardinal  fact  of  imitation  in  works 
of  art  is  evident  enough.  The  exquisite  charm  of 


106  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

art  lies  in  the  perfection  of  the  imitation,  coexist 
ing  with  the  consciousness  of  an  absolute  differ 
ence,  so  that  the  effect  produced  is  not  at  all  that 
which  the  object  itself  produces,  but  is  an  intel 
lectual  pleasure  arising  from  the  perception  of  the 
mingling  of  rational  intention  with  the  representa 
tion  of  the  natural  object.  "We  can  illustrate  this 
by  supposing  a  child  bringing  in  a  fresh  rose,  and 
a  painter  his  picture  of  a  rose.  The  pleasure  de 
rived  from  the  picture  is  surely  something  better 
than  wonder  at  the  skill  with  which  the  form  and 
color  of  the  flower  are  imitated.  Since  imitation 
can  never  attain  to  the  dignity  and  worth  of  the 
original,  and  since  we  live  in  the  midst  of  nature, 
it  would  be  folly  to  claim  for  its  more  or  less  suc 
cessful  copy  the  position  and  form  of  a  great  men 
tal  and  moral  influence. 

Of  course  we  are  not  unmindful  of  the  inevi 
table  assertion  that  if  certain  forms  are  to  be  used 
for  the  expression  of  certain  truths,  the  first  con 
dition  is  that  those  forms  shall  be  accurately  ren 
dered.  Hence  arises  the  great  stress  laid  by  the 
modern  schools  upon  a  rigorous  imitation  of  nat 
ure,  and  hence  what  is  called  the  pre-Raphaelite 
spirit,  with  its  marvellous  detail.  But  mere  imita 
tion  does  not  come  any  nearer  to  great  art  by  being 
perfect.  If  it  is  not  informed  by  a  great  intention, 
sculpture  is  only  wax-work  and  painting  a  juggle. 


RACHEL  107 

It  is  by  her  instinctive  recognition  of  these 
fundamental  principles  that  Rachel  shows  her 
self  to  be  an  artist.  She  is  fully  persuaded 
of  the  value  of  the  modern  spirit,  and  she  be 
longs  to  the  time  by  nothing  more  than  by  her 
instinctive  and  hearty  adaptation  of  the  principles 
of  art  which  are  illustrated  in  all  other  depart 
ments.  There  is  nothing  in  Millais's  or  Hunt's 
paintings  more  purely  pre-Raphaelite  than  Ra 
chel's  acting  in  the  last  scenes  of  "  Adrienne  Le- 
couvreur."  It  is  the  perfection  of  detail.  It 
was  studied,  gasp  by  gasp,  and  groan  by  groan, 
in  the  hospital  wards  of  Paris,  where  men  were 
dying  in  agony.  It  is  terrible,  but  it  is  true.  We 
have  seen  a  crowded  theatre  hanging  in  a  sus 
pense  almost  suffocating  over  that  fearful  scene. 
Men  grew  pale,  women  fainted,  a  spell  of  silence 
and  awe  held  us  enchanted.  But  it  was  all  pure 
art.  The  actor  was  superior  to  the  scene.  It  was 
the  passion  with  which  she  threw  herself  into  the 
representation,  with  a  distinct  conception  of  the 
whole,  and  a  thorough  knowledge  of  the  means 
necessary  to  produce  its  effect,  that  secured  the 
success.  There  was  a  sublimity  of  self-control  in 
the  spectacle,  for,  if  she  had  allowed  herself  to  be 
overwhelmed  by  the  excitement,  the  play  must 
have  paused  ;  real  feeling  would  have  invaded 
that  which  was  represented,  and  we  should,  by  a 


108  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

rude  shock,  have  been  staring  in  wonder  at  the 
weeping  woman  Rachel,  instead  of  thrilling  with 
the  woes  of  the  dying,  despairing  Adrienne.  She 
seems  to  be  what  we  know  she  is  not. 

Rachel's  earlier  triumphs  were  in  the  plays  of 
Racine.  Certainly  nothing  could  show  the  essen 
tial  worth  of  the  old  Greek  dramatic  material  more 
than  the  fact  that  it  could  be  rendered  into  French 
rhyme  without  losing  all  its  dignity.  If  a  man 
should  know  Homer  only  through  Pope's  transla 
tions,  he  could  hardly  understand  the  real  great 
ness  and  peculiar  charm  of  Homer.  And  as  most 
of  us  know  him  in  no  other  way,  we  all  under 
stand  that  the  eminence  of  Homer  is  conceded 
upon  the  force  of  tradition  and  the  feeling  of 
those  who  have  read  him  in  the  original.  So,  to 
the  reader  of  Racine,  it  is  his  knowledge  of  the 
outline  of  the  grand  old  Greek  stories  that  pre 
vents  their  loss  of  charm  and  loftiness  when  they 
masquerade  in  French  rhyme.  They  have  lost 
their  sublimity,  so  far  as  treatment  can  effect  it, 
while  they  retain  their  general  form  of  interest. 
But  it  is  the  splendid  triumph  of  Rachel  that  she 
restores  the  original  Greek  grandeur  to  the  drama. 
We  no  longer  wonder  at  Racine's  idea  of  Phedre, 
but  we  are  confronted  with  Phedre  herself.  From 
the  moment  she  appears,  through  every  change 
and  movement  of  the  scene  until  the  catastrophe, 


RACHEL  109 

a  sense  of  fate,  the  grim,  remorseless,  and  inexo 
rable  destiny  that  presides  over  Greek  story,  is 
stamped  upon  every  look  and  nod  and  movement 
of  Kacbel.  It  is  stated  that,  since  the  enthusiasm 
produced  in  Paris  by  Ristori,  Rachel's  Italian  ri 
val,  the  sculptor  Schlesinger  has  declared  that  his 
statue  of  Rachel  which  he  had  called  Tragedy  was 
only  Melodrama  after  all.  If  the  report  be  true, 
it  does  not  prove  that  Rachel,  but  Schlesinger,  is 
not  a  great  artist. 

It  is  this  simplicity  and  grandeur  that  make  the 
excellence  of  Rachel  in  the  characters  of  Racine. 
They  cease  to  be  French  and  become  Greek.  As 
a  victim  of  fate,  she  moves,  from  the  first  scene  to 
the  last,  as  by  a  resistless  impulse.  Her  voice  has 
a  low  concentrated  tone.  Her  movement  is  not 
vehement,  but  intense.  If  she  smiles,  it  is  a  wan 
gleam  of  sadness,  not  of  joy,  as  if  the  eyes  that 
lighten  for  a  moment  saw  all  the  time  the  finger 
of  fate  pointing  over  her  shoulder.  The  thin 
form,  graceful  with  intellectual  dignity,  not  round 
ed  with  the  ripeness  of  young  womanhood,  the 
statuesque  simplicity  and  severity  of  the  drapery, 
the  pale  cheek,  the  sad  lips,  the  small  eyes — these 
are  accessory  to  the  whole  impression,  the  melan 
choly  ornaments  of  the  tragic  scene.  Her  fine 
instinct  avoids  the  romantic  and  melodramatic 
touches  which,  however  seductive  to  an  actor  who 


110  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

aims  at  effect,  would  destroy  at  once  that  breadth 
and  unity  which  characterize  her  best  impersona 
tions.  Wherever  the  idea  of  fate  inspires  the 
tragedy,  or  can  properly  be  introduced  as  the  mo 
tive,  there  Rachel  is  unsurpassed  and  unapproach 
able.  Her  stillness,  her  solemnity,  her  intensity ; 
the  want  of  mouthing,  of  ranting,  of  all  extrava 
gance  ;  the  slight  movement  of  the  arms,  and  the 
subtle  inflections  of  the  voice  which  are  more  ex 
pressive  than  gestures,  haunt  the  memory  and 
float  through  the  mind  afterwards  as  the  figure  of 
Francesca  di  Rimini,  in  the  exquisite  picture  of 
Ary  Scheffer,  sweeps,  full  of  woe,  which  every  line 
suggests,  across  the  vision  of  Dante  and  his  guide. 
There  was,  naturally,  the  greatest  curiosity  and 
a  good  deal  of  scepticism  about  Rachel's  power  in 
the  modern  drama,  the  melodrama  of  Victor  Hugo, 
and  the  social  drama  of  Scribe.  But  her  appear 
ance  in  the  "Angelo"  of  Victor  Hugo  and  in 
"Adrienne  Lecouvreur"  of  Scribe  satisfied  the 
curiosity  and  routed  the  scepticism.  It  was  pleas 
ant  after  the  vast  and  imposing  forms,  the  tearless 
tragedy  of  Greek  story,  to  see  the  mastery  of  this 
genius  in  the  conditions  of  a  life  and  spirit  with 
which  we  were  more  familiar  and  sympathetic.  It 
was  clear  that  the  same  passionate  intensity  which, 
united  with  the  most  exquisite  perceptions,  enabled 
her  so  perfectly  to  restore  the  Greek  spirit  to  the 


RACHEL  111 

Greek  form,  would  as  adequately  represent  the 
voluptuous  southern  life.  If  in  the  old  drama 
she  was  sculpture,  so  in  the  modern  she  was  paint 
ing,  not  only  with  the  flowing  outline,  but  with 
all  the  purple,  palpitating  hues  of  passion. 

This  is  best  manifested  in  the  "Angelo,"  of 
which  the  scene  is  laid  in  old  Padua  and  is,  there 
fore,  full  of  the  mysterious  spirit  of  mediaeval  Ital 
ian,  and  especially  Venetian  life.  Miss  Gush  man 
has  played  in  an  English  version  of  this  drama, 
called  the  "  Actress  of  Padua."  But  it  is  hardly 
grandiose  enough  in  its  proportions  to  be  very  well 
adapted  to  the  talent  of  Miss  Cushman.  It  was  re 
markable  how  perfectly  the  genius  which  had,  the 
evening  before,  adequately  represented  Phedre, 
could  impersonate  the  ablest  finesse  of  Italian  snb- 
tilty.  The  old  Italian  romances  were  made  real  in 
a  moment.  The  dim  chambers,  the  dusky  passages, 
the  sliding  doors,  the  vivid  contrast  of  gayety  and 
gloom,  the  dance  in  the  palace  and  the  duel  in  the 
garden,  the  smile  on  the  lip  and  the  stab  at  the 
heart,  the  capricious  feeling,  the  impetuous  action, 
the  picturesque  costume  of  life  and  society  —  all 
the  substance  and  the  form  of  our  ideas  of  char 
acteristic  Italian  life,  are  comprised  in  Rachel's 
Thisbe  and  Angelo. 

There  is  one  scene  in  that  play  not  to  be  for 
gotten.  Tiie  curtain  rises  and  shows  a  vast,  dim. 


112  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

chamber  in  the  castle,  with  a  heavily -curtained 
bed,  and  massive  carved  furniture,  and  a  deep 
bay-window.  It  is  night ;  a  candle  burns  upon  the 
table,  feebly  flickering  in  the  gloom  of  the  great 
chamber.  Angelo,  whom  Thisbe  loves,  and  who 
pretends  to  love  her,  is  sitting  uneasily  in  the 
chamber  with  his  mistress,  whose  name  we  have 
forgotten,  but  whom  he  really  loves.  Thisbe  is 
suspicious  of  his  want  of  faith,  and  burns  with 
jealousy,  but  has  had  no  proof. 

A  gust  of  wind,  the  rustle  of  the  tapestry,  the 
creak  of  a  bough  in  the  garden,  the  note  of  a  night 
bird,  any  slightest  sound  makes  the  lovers  start 
and  quiver,  as  if  they  stood  upon  the  verge  of  an 
imminent  peril.  Suddenly  they  both  start  at  a 
low  noise,  apparently  in  the  wall.  Angelo  rises 
and  looks  about,  his  mistress  shivers  and  shrinks, 
but  they  discover  nothing.  The  night  deepens 
around  them.  The  sense  of  calamity  and  catas 
trophe  rises  in  the  spectator's  mind.  They  start 
again.  This  time  they  hear  a  louder  noise,  and 
glance  helplessly  around  and  feebly  try  to  scofE 
away  their  terror.  The  sound  dies  away,  and  they 
converse  in  appalled  and  fragmentary  whispers. 
But  again  a  low,  cautious,  sliding  noise  arrests 
them.  Angelo  springs  up,  runs  for  his  hat  and 
cloak,  blows  out  the  candle  upon  the  table,  and 
escapes  from  the  room,  while  his  mistress  totters 


RACHEL  113 

to  the  bed  and  throws  herself  upon  it,  feigning 
sleep.  The  stage  is  left  unoccupied,  while  the  just- 
extinguished  candle  still  smokes  upon  the  table, 
and  the  sidelights  and  footlights,  being  lowered, 
wrap  the  vast  chamber  in  deeper  gloom. 

At  this  moment  a  small  secret  door  in  the  wall 
at  the  bottom  of  the  stage  slips  aside,  and  Thisbe, 
still  wearing  her  ball-dress,  and  with  a  head-dress  of 
gold  sequins  flashing  in  her  black  hair,  is  discov 
ered  crouching  in  the  aperture,  holding  an  antique 
lamp  in  one  hand,  a  little  raised,  and  with  the 
other  softly  putting  aside  the  door,  while,  bending 
forward  with  a  cat-like  stillness,  she  glares  around 
the  chamber  with  eager  eyes,  that  flash  upon  every 
thing  at  once.  The  picture  is  perfect.  The  light 
falls  from  the  raised  lamp  upon  this  jewelled  fig 
ure  crouching  in  the  darkness  at  the  bottom  of 
the  stage.  Judith  was  not  more  terrible;  Lucrezia 
Borgia  not  more  superb.  Bat,  magnificent  as  it 
is,  it  is  a  moment  of  such  intense  interest  that 
applause  is  suspended.  The  house  is  breathless, 
for  it  is  but  the  tiger's  crouch  that  precedes  the 
spring.  The  next  instant  she  is  upon  the  floor  of 
the  chamber,  and,  still  bending  slightly  forward  to 
express  the  eager  concentration  of  her  mind,  she 
glances  at  the  bed  and  the  figure  upon  it  with  a 
scornful  sneer,  that  indicates  how  clearly  she  sees 
the  pretence  of  sleep,  and  how  evidently  some- 


UNIVERSITY 


114  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

body  has  been  there,  or  something  has  happened 
which  justifies  all  her  suspicion,  and  then,  with 
panther-like  celerity,  she  darts  about  the  chamber 
to  find  some  trace  of  the  false  lover — a  hat,  a 
glove,  a  plume,  a  cloak — to  make  assurance  doubly 
sure.  But  there  is  nothing  upon  the  floor,  noth 
ing  upon  the  table,  nothing  in  the  bay-window, 
nothing  upon  the  sofa,  nor  in  the  huge  carved 
chairs ;  th'ere  is  nothing  that  proves  the  treachery 
she  suspects.  But  her  restless  eye  leads  her 
springing  foot  from  one  corner  of  the  chamber 
to  the  other.  Speed  increases  with  the  lessening 
chance  of  proof;  the  eye  flashes  more  and  more 
fiercely;  the  breast  heaves;  the  hand  clinches; 
the  cheek  burns,  until,  suddenly,  in  the  very  mo 
ment  of  despair,  having  as  yet  spoken  no  word, 
she  comes  to  the  table,  sees  the  candle,  which  still 
smokes,  and  drawing  herself  up  with  fearful  calm 
ness,  her  cheeks  grow  pallid,  the  lips  livid,  the 
hands  relax,  the  eye  deadens  as  with  a  blow,  and, 
with  the  despairing  conviction  that  she  is  be 
trayed,  her  heart-break  sighs  itself  out  in  a  cold 
whisper,  " Elle  fume  encore" 

In  this  she  is  as  purely  dramatic  as  in  other 
plays  she  is  classical.  But  neither  in  the  one  nor 
the  other  is  there  a  look,  or  a  gesture,  or  a  word, 
which  is  not  harmonious  with  the  spirit  of  the 
style  and  the  character  of  the  person  represented. 


RACHEL  H5 

This  is  pure  passion  as  the  other  is  implacable 
fate.  There  is  something  so  tearfully  human  in 
it  that  you  are  touched  as  by  a  picture  of  the 
Magdalen.  Every  representation  of  Rachel  is 
preserved  in  your  memory  with  the  first  sights  of 
the  great  statues  and  the  famous  pictures. 

In  the  French  translation  of  Schiller's  "Mary 
Stuart,"  a  character  which  may  be  supposed  espe 
cially  to  interest  Americans  and  English,  Rachel 
is  not  less  excellent.  The  sad  grace,  the  tender 
resignation,  the  poetic  enthusiasm,  the  petulant  ca 
price,  the  wilful,  lovely  womanliness  of  the  lovely 
queen,  are  made  tragically  real  by  her  representa 
tion.  Perhaps  it  is  not  the  Mary  of  Mignet  nor 
of  history.  But  Mary  Queen  of  Scots  is  one  of 
the  characters  which  the  imagination  has  chosen 
to  take  from  history  and  decorate  with  immortal 
grace.  It  cares  less  for  what  the  woman  Mary 
was,  than  to  have  a  figure  standing  upon  the  fact 
of  history,  but  radiant  with  the  beauty  of  poetry. 
It  has  invested  her  with  a  loveliness  that  is  per 
haps  unreal,  with  a  tenderness  and  sweetness  that 
were  possibly  foreign  to  her  character,  and  with 
a  general  fascination  and  good  intention  which  a 
contemporary  might  not  have  discovered. 

It  has  made  her  the  ideal  of  unfortunate  wom 
anhood.  For  it  seemed  that  a  fate  so  tragic  de 
served  a  fame  so  fair.  Perhaps  the  weakness 


116  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

which  Mary  had,  and  which  Lady  Jane  Grey  had 
not,  have  been  the  very  reasons  why  the  unfort 
unate,  unhappy  Queen  Mary  is  dearer  to  our  hu 
man  sympathies  than  the  unfortunate  Lady  Jane. 
Perhaps  because  it  was  a  woman  who  pursued 
her,  the  instinct  of  men  has  sought  to  restore,  by 
the  canonization  of  Mary,  the  womanly  ideal  in 
jured  by  Elizabeth. 

But,  whatever  be  the  reason,  there  is  no  ques 
tion  that  we  judge  Mary  Queen  of  Scots  more  by 
the  imagination  than  by  historical  rigor  ;  and  it  is 
Mary,  as  the  mind  insists  upon  having  her,  that 
Rachel  represents.  She  conspires  with  the  imagi 
nation  to  complete  the  ideal  of  Mary.  It  is  a 
story  told  in  sad  music  to  which  we  listen ;  it  is 
a  mournful  panorama,  unfolding  itself  scene  by 
scene,  upon  which  we  gaze.  Lost  in  soft  melan 
choly,  the  figures  of  the  drama  move  before  us 
as  in  a  tragic  dream.  But  after  seeing  Rachel's 
Mary  we  can  see  no  other.  If  we  meet  her 
in  history  or  romance,  it  is  always  that  figure, 
those  pensive  eyes,  forecasting  a  fearful  doom, 
that  voice  whose  music  is  cast  in  a  hopeless  minor. 
It  is  thus  that  dramatic  genius  creates,  and  poetry 
disputes  with  history. 

Jules  Janin  says  that  Rachel  is -best  in  those 
parts  of  this  play  where  the  anger  of  the  Queen 
is  more  prominent  than  the  grief  of  the  woman. 


RACHEL  117 

This  is  true  to  a  certain  extent.  It  was  not  diffi 
cult  to  see  that  the  fierceness  was  more  natural 
than  the  tenderness  to  the  woman  Rachel,  and 
that,  therefore,  those  parts  had  a  reality  which  the 
tenderness  had  not.  But  the  performance  was 
symmetrical,  and,  so  far  as  the  mere  acting  was 
concerned,  the  woman  was  as  well  rendered  as  the 
Qneen.  The  want  of  the  spectacle  was  this,  and 
it  is,  we  fully  grant,  the  defect  of  all  her  similar 
personations :  you  felt  that  it  was  only  intellect 
feigning  heart,  though  with  perfect  success.  The 
tenderness  and  caprice  of  the  woman,  and  the 
pride  and  dignity  of  the  Queen,  are  all  there.  She* 
would  not  be  the  consummate  artist  she  is  if  she 
could  not  give  them.  But  even  through  your 
tears  you  see  that  it  is  art.  It  is,  indeed,  con 
cealed  by  its  own  perfection,  but  it  is  not  lost  in 
the  loveliness  of  the  character  it  suggests,  as  might 
be  the  case  with  a  greatly  inferior  artist.  You 
are  half  sure,  as  you  own  the  excellence,  that  much 
of  the  tender  effect  arises  from  your  feeling  that 
Rachel,  as  she  represents  a  woman  so  different 
from  herself,  regards  her  role  with  sad  longing 
and  vague  regret.  When  we  say  that  she  is  the 
ideal  Mary,  we  mean  strictly  the  artistic  ideal. 

The  late  Charlotte  Bronte,  in  her  novel  of  Vil- 
lette,  has  described  Rachel  with  a  splendor  of 
rhetoric  that  is  very  unusual  with  the  author  of 


118  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

Jane  Eyre.  But  in  the  style  of  the  description 
it  is  very  easy  to  see  the  influence  of  the  thing  de 
scribed.  It  has  a  picturesque  stateliness,  a  grave 
grace  and  musical  pomp,  which  all  belong  to  the 
genius  of  .Rachel.  Even  the  soft  gloom  of  her 
eyes  is  in  it ;  a  gloom  and  a  fire  which  no  one 
could  more  subtly  feel  than  Miss  Bronte.  Her 
description  is  the  best  that  we  have  seen  of  what 
is,  in  its  nature,  after  all  indescribable. 

As  the  fame  of  an  actor  or  singer  is  necessarily 
traditional,  and  rapidly  perishes,  it  is  not  easy  to 
compare  one  with  another  when  they  are  not  con 
temporaries,  for  you  find  yourself  only  comparing 
vague  impressions  and  reports.  Of  Roscius  and 
Betterton  we  must  accept  the  names  and  allow 
the  fame.  We  can  see  Reynolds' s  pictures,  we  can 
hear  Handel's  music,  we  can  read  Goldsmith's  and 
Johnson's  books;  but  of  Garrick  what  can  we 
have  but  a  name,  and  somebody's  account  of  what 
he  thought  of  Garrick?  The  touch  of  Shake 
speare  we  can  feel  as  well  as  did  our  ancestors, 
and  our  great-grandchildren's  great-grandchildren 
will  feel  it  as  fully  as  we.  But  the  voice  of 
Malibran  lingers  in  only  a  few  happy  memories, 
and  we  know  Mrs.  Siddons  better  by  Sir  Joshua's 
portrait  than  by  her  own  glories. 

It  is,  therefore,  impossible  to  decide  what 
relative  rank  among  actresses  Rachel  occupies. 


RACHEL  119 

Mrs.  Jameson,  in  her  Common -Place  Boole  of 
Thoughts,  Memories,  and  Fancies,  says  some  sharp 
things  of  her,  and  Mrs.  Jameson  is  a  critic  of  too 
delicate  a  mind  not  to  be  heeded.  The  general 
view  she  takes  of  Rachel  is,  that  she  is  not  a  great 
artist  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word.  She  is  a 
finished  actress,  but  not  an  artist  fine  enough  to 
conceal  her  art.  The  last  scene  of  "Adrienne  Le- 
couvreur"  seems  to  Mrs,  Jameson  a  mistake  and  a 
failure — so  beyond  the  limits  of  art,  a  mere  imita 
tion  of  a  repulsive  physical  fact ;  and  finally  she 
pronounces  that  Rachel  has  talent  but  not  genius ; 
while  it  is  the  "  entire  absence  of  the  high  poetic 
element  which  distinguishes  Rachel  as  an  actress, 
and  places  her  at  such  an  immeasurable  distance 
from  Mrs.  Siddons,  that  it  shocks  me  to  hear  their 
names  together." 

It  may  be  fairly  questioned,  whether  a  woman 
so  refined  and  cultivated  as  Mrs.  Jameson  may  not 
have  judged  Rachel  rather  by  her  wants  as  a  wom 
an  than  by  her  excellence  as  an  artist.  That  the 
terrible  last  scene  of  "Adrienne"  is  a  harrowing 
imitation  of  nature  we  have  conceded.  The  play 
is,  in  truth,  a  mere  melodrama.  It  is  a  vaudeville 
of  costume,  with  a  frightful  catastrophe  appended. 
But  as  an  artist  she  seems  to  us  perfectly  to 
render  the  part.  She  does  not  make  it  more  than 
it  is,  but  she  makes  it  just  what  it  is — a  proud,  in- 


120  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

jured,  and  betrayed  actress.  Whether  the  ac 
curacy  of  her  imitation  is  not  justified  by  the  in 
tention,  which  alone  can  redeem  imitation,  will 
remain  a  question  to  each  spectator.  Mrs.  Jame 
son  also  insists  that  Rachel's  power  is  extraneous, 
and  excites  only  the  senses  and  the  intellect,  and 
that  she  has  become  a  hard  mannerist. 

In  our  remarks  upon  this  celebrated  actress  we 
have  viewed  her  simply  as  an  artist,  and  not  as  a 
woman.  She  appeals  to  the  public  only  in  that 
way.  Perhaps  the  sinister  stories  that  are  told  of 
her  private  career  only  serve  to  confirm  and  deep 
en  the  feeling  of  the  intensity  of  her  nature,  she 
so  skilfully  represents  the  most  fearful  passions, 
not  from  the  perception  of  genius  alone,  but  from 
the  knowledge  of  actual  experience.  Certainly 
no  woman's  character  has  been  more  freely  dis 
cussed,  and  no  public  performer  of  any  kind  ever 
sought  so  little  to  propitiate  her  audience.  She 
has  seemed  to  scorn  the  world  she  fascinated  ;  and 
like  a  superb  snake,  with  glittering  eyes  and  cold 
crest,  to  gloat  over  the  terror  which  held  her  cap 
tives  thrall.  Hence  it  is  not  surprising  to  one 
who  has  seen  her  a  great  deal,  and  has  felt  the  pe 
culiarity  of  her  power,  to  find  in  Lehmann's  por 
trait  of  her — which  is,  perhaps,  the  most  character 
istic  of  all  that  have  been  taken — a  subtle  resem 
blance  to  a  serpent,  which  is  at  once  fascinating  and 


RACHEL  121 

startling.  Mrs.  Jameson  mentions  that  when  she 
first  saw  her  in  Hermione,  she  was  reminded  of  a 
Lamia,  or  serpent  nature  in  woman's  form.  As 
yon  look  at  Lehmann's  portrait  this  feeling  is  irre 
sistible.  The  head  bends  slightly  forward,  with 
a  darting,  eager  movement,  yet  with  a  fine,  lithe 
grace.  The  keen,  bright  eyes  glance  a  little 
askance,  with  a  want  of  free  confidence.  There  are 
a  slim  smoothness,  a  silent  alertness,  in  the  gen 
eral  impression — a  nervous,  susceptible  intentness, 
united  with  undeniable  beauty,  that  recall  the 
deadly -nightshade  among  flowers  and  Keats's 
"  Lamia"  among  poems.  The  portrait  would  fully 
interpret  the  poem.  She  looked  the  lovely  La 
mia  upon  the  verge  of  flight,  at  the  instant  when 
she  felt  the  calm,  inexorable  eye  of  criticism  and 
detection.  In  a  moment,  while  you  gaze,  that 
form  will  be  prone,  those  bright,  cold  eyes  ma 
lignant,  that  wily  grace  will  undulate  into  mo 
tion  and  glide  away.  You  feel  that  there  is  no 
human  depravity  that  Rachel  could  not  adequately 
represent.  Perhaps  you  doubt  if  she  could  be 
Desdeinona  or  Imogen, 

Rachel  is  great,  but  there  is  something  greater. 
It  is  not  an  entirely  satisfactory  display  of  human 
power,  even  in  its  own  way.  Her  triumph  is  that 
of  an  actress.  It  is  only  an  intellectual  success. 
For  however  subtly  dramatic  genius  may  seize 


122  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

and  represent  the  forms  of  human  emotion,  yet 
the  representation  is  most  perfect — not,  indeed, 
as  art,  but  as  a  satisfaction  of  the  heart — when 
the  personal  character  of  the  artist  interests  those 
emotions  to  himself,  and  thus  sympathetically 
affects  the  audience.  Eachel's  Mary  is  a  per 
fect  portrait  of  Mary;  but  it  is  only  a  picture, 
after  all,  that  expresses  the  difference  in  feeling 
between  the  impression  of  her  personation  and 
that  which  will  be  derived  from  another  wom 
an.  The  fiercer  and  darker  passions  of  human 
nature  are  depicted  by  her  with  terrible  force- 
power.  They  throb  with  reality ;  but  in  the  soft, 
superior  shades  you  still  feel  that  it  is  emotion 
intellectually  discerned. 

Such  facts  easily  explain  the  present  defection  of 
Paris  from  Eachel.  Kistori  has  come  up  from  Italy, 
and  with  one  woman's  smile,  "full  of  the  warm 
South,"  she  has  lured  Paris  to  her  feet.  There 
is  no  more  sudden  and  entire  desertion  of  a  favor 
ite  recorded  in  all  the  annals  of  popular  caprice. 
The  feuilletonists,  who  are  a  power  in  Paris,  have 
gone  over  in  a  body  to  the  beautiful  Italian.  They 
describe  her  triumphs  precisely  as  they  described 
Kachel's.  The  old  ecstasies  are  burnished  up  for 
the  new  occasion.  In  a  country  like  ours,  where 
there  is  no  theatre,  and  where  the  dramatic  differ 
ences  only  creep  into  an  advertisement,  such  an 


RACHEL  123 

excitement  as  Paris  feels,  from  such  a  cause  and 
at  such  a  time,  is  simply  incredible.  It  is,  possi 
bly,  as  real  and  dignified  an  excitement  as  that 
which  Xew  York  experienced  upon  the  decease  of 
the  late  lamented  William  Poole. 

There  are  various  explanations  of  this  fall  of 
Rachel,  without  resorting  to  the  theory  of  superior 
genius  in  Ristori.  Undoubtedly  Paris  loves  novel 
ty,  and  has  been  impatient  of  the  disdainful  sway 
of  Rachel.  Her  reputed  avarice  and  want  of  cour 
tesy  and  generosity,  her  total  failure  to  charm  as 
a  woman  while  she  fascinated  as  an  artist,  have, 
naturally  enough,  after  many  years,  fatigued  the 
patience  and  disappointed  the  humane  sympathies 
of  a  public  whose  mere  curiosity  had  been  long 
satisfied.  Rachel  seemed  only  more  Parisian  than 
Paris. 

But  when  over  the  Alps  came  Ristori,  lovely  as 
a  woman  and  eminent  as  an  artist,  then  there 
was  a  new  person  who  could  make  Paris  weep  at 
her  greatness  upon  the  stage,  and  her  goodness 
away  from  it ;  who,  in  the  plenitude  of  her  first 
success,  could  shame  the  reported  avarice  of  her 
fallen  rival  by  offers  of  the  sincerest  generosity. 
"When  Ristori  came,  who  seemed  to  have  a  virtue 
for  every  vice  of  Rachel,  Paris,  with  one  accord, 
hurried  with  hymns  and  incense  to  the  new  divin 
ity.  We  regard  it  as  a  homage  to  the  woman  no  less 


124  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

than  a  tribute  to  the  artist.  "We  regard  it  as  say 
ing  to  Kachel  that  if,  being  humane  and  lovely, 
she  chose,  from  pride,  to  rule  by  scornful  supe 
riority,  she  has  greatly  erred ;  or  if,  being  really 
unlovely,  she  has  held  this  crown  only  by  her 
genius,  she  has  yet  to  see  human  nature  justify 
itself  by  preferring  a  humane  to  an  inhuman 
power.  The  most  splendid  illustration  of  this 
kind  of  homage  was  the  career  of  Jenny  Lincl 
in  America.  It  was  rather  the  fashion  among 
the  dilettanti  to  undervalue  her  excellence  as  an 
artist.  A  popular  superficial  criticism  was  fond 
of  limiting  her  dramatic  power  to  inferior  roles. 
She  was  denied  passion  and  great  artistic  skill; 
she  was  accused  of  tricks.  But,  even  had  these 
things  been  true,  what  a  career  it  was !  It  was 
unprecedented,  and  can  never  be  repeated.  Yet  it 
was,  at  bottom,  the  success  of  a  saint  rather  than 
that  of  a  singer.  Had  she  been  a  worse  or  better 
artist  the  homage  would  have  been  the  same.  If 
the  public — and  it  is  a  happy  fact — can  love  the 
woman  even  more  than  it  admires  the  artist,  her 
triumph  is  assured. 

We  look  upon  the  enthusiasm  for  Ristori  by  no 
means  as  an  unmingled  tribute  to  superior  gen 
ius.  We  make  no  question  of  her  actual. woman 
ly  charms.  Even  if  appearance  of  generosity,  of 
simplicity,  and  sweetness  were  only  deep  Italian 


RACHEL  125 

wile,  and  assumed,  upon  profound  observation  and 
consideration  of  human  nature  and  the  circum 
stances  of  Rachel's  position  in  Paris,  merely  for 
the  purpose  of  exciting  applause,  that  applause 
would  still  be  genuine,  and  would  prove  the  loy 
alty  of  the  public  mind  to  what  is  truly  lovely. 
It  was  our  good-fortune  to  see  Eistori  in  Italy, 
where,  for  the  last  ten  years,  she  has  been  account 
ed  the  first  Italian  actress.  She  has  there  been 
seen  by  all  the  travelling  world  of  Europe  and 
America.  It  is  not  possible  that  so  great  a  talent, 
as  the  Parisians  consider  it,  could  have  been  so 
long  overlooked.  We  well  remember  Kistori  as  a 
charming,  natural,  simple  actress ;  but  of  the  sur 
passing  power  which  Paris  has  discovered  proba 
bly  very  few  of  us  retain  any  recollection. 


THACKERAY  IN   AMERICA 


THACKERAY  IN  AMERICA 

MR.  THACKERAY'S  visit  at  least  demonstrates 
that  if  we  are  unwilling  to  pay  English  authors 
for  their  books,  we  are  ready  to  reward  them 
handsomely  for  the  opportunity  of  seeing  and 
hearing  them.  If  Mr.  Dickens,  instead  of  dining 
at  other  people's  expense,  and  making  speeches 
at  his  own,  when  he  came  to  see  us,  had  devoted 
an  evening  or  two  in  the  week  to  lecturing,  his 
purse  would  have  been  fuller,  his  feelings  sweet 
er,  and  his  fame  fairer.  It  was  a  Quixotic  cru 
sade,  that  of  the  Copyright,  and  the  excellent 
Don  has  never  forgiven  the  windmill  that  broke 
his  spear. 

Undoubtedly,  when  it  was  ascertained  that  Mr. 
Thackeray  was  coming,  the  public  feeling  on  this 
side  of  the  sea  was  very  much  divided  as  to  his 
probable  reception.  "  He'll  come  and  humbug 
us,  eat  our  dinners,  pocket  our  money,  and  go 
home  and  abuse  us,  like  that  unmitigated  snob 
Dickens,"  said  Jonathan,  chafing  with  the  re 
membrance  of  that  grand  ball  at  the  Park  The- 


130  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

atre  and  the  Boz  tableaux,  and  the  universal 
wining  and  dining,  to  which  the  distinguished 
Dickens  was  subject  while  he  was  our  guest. 

"Let  him  have  his  say,"  said  others,  "and  we 
will  have  our  look.  We  will  pay  a  dollar  to  hear 
him,  if  we  can  see  him  at  the  same  time ;  and  as 
for  the  abuse,  why,  it  takes  even  more  than  two 
such  cubs  of  the  roaring  British  Lion  to  frighten 
the  American  Eagle.  Let  him  come,  and  give 
him  fair  play." 

He  did  come,  and  had  fair  play,  and  returned 
to  England  with  a  comfortable  pot  of  gold  hold 
ing  $12,000,  and  with  the  hope  and  promise  of  see 
ing  us  again  in  September,  to  discourse  of  some 
thing  not  less  entertaining  than  the  witty  men  and 
sparkling  times  of  Anne.  We  think  there  was  no 
disappointment  with  his  lectures.  Those  who 
knew  his  books  found  the  author  in  the  lecturer. 
Those  who  did  not  know  his  books  were  charmed 
in  the  lecturer  by  what  is  charming  in  the  author 
— the  unaffected  humanity,  the  tenderness,  the 
sweetness,  the  genial  play  of  fancy,  and  the  sad 
touch  of  truth,  with  that  glancing  stroke  of  satire 
which,  lightning-like,  illumines  while  it  withers. 
The  lectures  were  even  more  delightful  than  the 
books,  because  the  tone  of  the  voice  and  the  ap 
pearance  of  the  man,  the  general  personal  mag 
netism,  explained  and  alleviated  so  much  that 


THACKERAY  IN  AMERICA  l$\ 

would  otherwise  have  seemed  doubtful  or  unfair. 
For  those  who  had  long  felt  in  the  writings  of 
Thackeray  a  reality  quite  inexpressible,  there  was 
a  secret  delight  in  finding  it  justified  in  his  speak 
ing  ;  for  he  speaks  as  he  writes — simply,  directly, 
without  flourish,  without  any  cant  of  oratory,  com 
mending  what  he  says  by  its  intrinsic  sense,  and 
the  sympathetic  and  humane  way  in  which  it  was 
spoken.  Thackeray  is  the  kind  of  " stump  orator " 
that  would  have  pleased  Carlyle.  He  never  thrusts 
himself  between  you  and  his  thought.  If  his  con 
ception  of  the  time  and  his  estimate  of  the  men 
differ  from  your  own,  you  have  at  least  no  doubt 
what  his  view  is,  nor  how  sincere  and  necessary  it 
is  to  him.  Mr.  Thackeray  considers  Swift  a  misan 
thrope  ;  he  loves  Goldsmith  and  Steele  and  Harry 
Fielding;  he  has  no  love  for  Sterne,  great  admira 
tion  for  Pope,  and  alleviated  admiration  for  Addi- 
son.  How  could  it  be  otherwise  ?  How  could 
Thackeray  not  think  Swift  a  misanthrope  and 
Sterne  a  factitious  sentimentalist?  He  is  a  man 
of  instincts,  not  of  thoughts :  he  sees  and  feels. 
He  would  be  Shakespeare's  call-boy,  rather  than 
dine  with  the  Dean  of  St.  Patrick's.  He  would 
take  a  pot  of  ale  with  Goldsmith,  rather  than  a 
glass  of  burgundy  with  the  "  Reverend  Mr. 
Sterne,"  and  that  simply  because  he  is  Thackeray. 
He  would  have  done  it  as  Fielding  would  have 


132  LIT  EH  AH,  F  AND  SOCIAL  ESS  A  TS 

done  it,  because  he  values  one  genuine  emotion 
above  the  most  dazzling  thought ;  because  he  is, 
in  fine,  a  Bohemian,  "  a  minion  of  the  moon,"  a 
great,  sweet,  generous  heart. 

We  say  this  with  more  unction  now  that  we 
have  personal  proof  of  it  in  his  public  and  private 
intercourse  while  he  was  here. 

The  popular  Thackeray  -  theory,  before  his  arri 
val,  was  of  a  severe  satirist,  who  concealed  scalpels 
in  his  sleeves  and  carried  probes  in  his  waistcoat 
pockets;  a  wearer  of  masks;  a  scoffer  and  sneerer, 
and  general  infidel  of  all  high  aims  and  noble 
character.  Certainly  we  are  justified  in  saying 
that  his  presence  among  us  quite  corrected  this 
idea.  We  welcomed  a  friendly,  genial  man  ;  not 
at  all  convinced  that  speech  is  heaven's  first  law, 
but  willing  to  be  silent  when  there  is  nothing  to 
say ;  who  decidedly  refused  to  be  lionized — not 
by  sulking,  but  by  stepping  off  the  pedestal  and 
challenging  the  common  sympathies  of  all  he  met; 
a  man  who,  in  view  of  the  thirty-odd  editions  of 
Martin  Farquhar  Tupper,  was  willing  to  confess 
that  every  author  should  "think  small -beer  of 
himself."  Indeed,  he  has  this  rare  quality,  that 
his  personal  impression  deepens,  in  kind,  that  of 
his  writings.  The  quiet  and  comprehensive  grasp 
of  the  fact,  and  the  intellectual  impossibility  of 
holding  fast  anything  but  the  fact,  is  as  manifest 


THACKERA T  /Y  AMERICA  133 

in  the  essayist  upon  the  wits  as  in  the  author  of 
Henry  Esmond  and  Vanity  Fair.  Shall  we  say 
that  this  is  the  sura  of  his  power,  and  the  secret  of 
his  satire?  It  is  not  what  might  be,  nor  what  we 
or  other  persons  of  well-regulated  minds  might 
wish,  but  it  is  the  actual  state  of  things  that  he 
sees  and  describes.  How,  then,  can  he  help  what 
we  call  satire,  if  he  accept  Mrs.  Rawdon  Crawley's 
invitation  and  describe  her  party  ?  There  was  no 
more  satire  in  it,  so  far  as  he  is  concerned,  than  in 
painting  lilies  white.  A  full-length  portrait  of  the 
fair  Lady  Beatrix,  too,  must  needs  show  a  gay  and 
vivid  figure,  superbly  glittering  across  the  vista  of 
those  stately  days.  Then,  should  Dab  and  Tab, 
the  eminent  critics,  step  up  and  demand  that  her 
eyes  be  a  pale  blue,  and  her  stomacher  higher 
around  the  neck?  Do  Dab  and  Tab  expect  to 
gather  pears  from  peach-trees  ?  Or,  because  their 
theory  of  dendrology  convinces  them  that  an  ideal 
fruit-tree  would  supply  any  fruit  desired  upon  ap 
plication,  do  they  denounce  the  non-pear-bearing 
peach-tree  in  the  columns  of  their  valuable  jour 
nal?  This  is  the  drift  of  the  fault  found  with 
Thackeray.  He  is  not  Fenelon,  he  is  not  Dickens, 
he  is  not  Scott;  he  is  not  poetical,  he  is  not  ideal, 
he  is  not  humane;  he  is  not  Tit,  he  is  not  Tat,  com 
plain  the  eminent  Dabs  and  Tabs.  Of  course  he 
is  not,  because  he  is  Thackeray — a  man  who  de- 


134  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

scribes  what  he  sees,  motives  as  well  as  appear 
ances — a  man  who  believes  that  character  is  better 
than  talent — that  there  is  a  worldly  weakness  su 
perior  to  worldly  wisdom — that  Dick  Steele  may 
haunt  the  ale-house  and  be  carried  home  muzzy, 
and  yet  be  a  more  commendable  character  than 
the  reverend  Dean  of  St.  Patrick's,  who  has  gen 
ius  enough  to  illuminate  a  century,  but  not  sym 
pathy  enough  to  sweeten  a  drop  of  beer.  And  he 
represents  this  in  a  way  that  makes  us  see  it  as  he 
does,  and  without  exaggeration ;  for  surely  noth 
ing  could  be  more  simple  than  his  story  of  the  life 
of  "  honest  Dick  Steele."  If  he  allotted  to  that 
gentleman  a  consideration  disproportioned  to  the 
space  he  occupies  in  literary  history,  it  only  showed 
the  more  strikingly  how  deeply  the  writer-lectur 
er's  sympathy  was  touched  by  Steele's  honest  hu 
manity. 

An  article  in  our  April  number  complained  that 
the  tendency  of  his  view  of  Anne's  times  was  to  a 
social  laxity,  which  might  be  very  exhilarating  but 
was  very  dangerous  ;  that  the  lecturer's  warm  com 
mendation  of  fermented  drinks,  taken  at  a  very 
early  hour  of  the  morning  in  tavern -rooms  and 
club  houses,  was  as  deleterious  to  the  moral  health 
of  enthusiastic  young  readers  disposed  to  the  lit 
erary  life  as  the  beverage  itself  to  their  physical 
health. 


TEA  CKERA  T  IN  AMERICA  135 

But  this  is  not  a  charge  to  be  brought  against 
Thackeray.  It  is  a  quarrel  with  history  and  with 
the  nature  of  literary  life.  Artists  and  authors 
have  always  been  the  good  fellows  of  the  world. 
That  mental  organization  which  predisposes  a  man 
to  the  pursuit  of  literature  and  art  is  made  up  of 
talent  combined  with  ardent  social  sympathy,  ge 
niality,  and  passion,  and  leads  him  to  taste  every 
cup  and  try  every  experience.  There  is  certainly 
no  essential  necessity  that  this  class  should  be  a  dis 
sipated  and  disreputable  class,  but  by  their  very 
susceptibility  to  enjoyment  they  will  always  be 
the  pleasure  lovers  and  seekers.  And  here  is  the 
social  compensation  to  the  literary  man  for  the 
surrender  of  those  chances  of  fortune  which  men 
of  other  pursuits  enjoy.  If  he  makes  less  money, 
he  makes  more  juice  out  of  what  he  does  make. 
If  he  cannot  drink  Burgundy  he  can  quaff  the  nut- 
brown  ale ;  while  the  most  brilliant  wit,  the  most 
salient  fancy,  the  sweetest  sympathy,  the  most  ge 
nial  culture,  shall  sparkle  at  his  board  more  radiant 
ly  than  a  silver  service,  and  give  him  the  spirit  of 
the  tropics  and  the  Rhine,  whose  fruits  are  on  oth 
er  tables.  The  golden  light  that  transfigures  tal 
ent  and  illuminates  the  world,  and  which  we  call 
genius,  is  erratic  and  erotic;  and  while  in  Milton  it 
is  austere,  and  in  Wordsworth  cool,  and  in  Southey 
methodical,  in  Shakespeare  it  is  fervent,  with  all 


136  LITERAR  Y  AND  SO  CIAL  ESS  A  YS 

the  results  of  fervor ;  in  Raphael  lovely,  with  all 
the  excesses  of  love ;  in  Dante  moody,  with  all  the 
whims  of  caprice.  The  old  quarrel  of  Lombard 
Street  with  Grub  Street  is  as  profound  as  that  of 
Osiris  and  Typho — it  is  the  difference  of  sympa 
thy.  The  Marquis  of  Westminster  will  take  good 
care  that  no  superfluous  shilling  escapes.  Oliver 
Goldsmith  will  still  spend  his  last  shilling  upon  a 
brave  and  unnecessary  banquet  to  his  friends. 

Whether  this  be  a  final  fact  of  human  organiza 
tion  or  not,  it  is  certainly  a  fact  of  history.  Every 
man  instinctively  believes  that  Shakespeare  stole 
deer,  just  as  he  disbelieves  that  Lord-mayor  Whit- 
tington  ever  told  a  lie ;  and  the  secret  of  that  in- 
stinct  is  the  consciousness  of  the  difference  in  or 
ganization.  "  Knave,  I  have  the  power  to  hang 
ye,"  says  somebody  in  one  of  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher's  plays.  "  And  I  do  be  hanged  and  scorn 
ye,"  is  the  airy  answer.  "I  had  a  pleasant  hour 
the  other  evening,"  said  a  friend  to  us,  "  over  my 
cigar  and  a  book."  "  What  book  was  that  ?"  "  A 
treatise  conclusively  proving  the  awful  conse 
quences  of  smoking."  De  Quincey  came  up  to 
London  and  declared  war  upon  opium ;  but  dur 
ing  a  little  amnesty,  in  which  he  lapsed  into  his 
old  elysium,  he  wrote  his  best  book  depicting  its 
horrors. 

Our  readers  will  not  imagine  that  we  are  advo- 


TEA  CKERA  Y  IN  AMERICA  137 

eating  the  claims  of  drunkenness  nor  defending 
social  excess.  We  are  only  recognizing  a  fact  and 
stating  an  obvious  tendency.  The  most  brilliant 
illustrations  of  every  virtue  are  to  be  found  in 
the  literary  guild,  as  well  as  the  saddest  beacons  of 
warning;  yet  it  will  often  occur  that  the  last  in 
talent  and  the  first  in  excess  of  a  picked  com 
pany  will  be  a  man  around  whom  sympathy 
most  kindly  lingers.  We  love  Goldsmith  more 
at  the  head  of  an  ill-advised  feast  than  Johnson 
and  his  friends  leaving  it,  thoughtful  and  gen 
erous  as  their  conduct  was.  The  heart  despises 
prudence. 

In  the  single-hearted  regard  we  know  that  pity 
has  a  larger  share.  Yet  it  is  not  so  much  that  pity 
is  commiseration  for  misfortune  and  deficiency,  as 
that  which  is  recognition  of  a  necessary  worldly 
ignorance.  The  literary  class  is  the  most  innocent 
of  all.  The  contempt  of  practical  men  for  the 
poets  is  based  upon  a  consciousness  that  they  are 
not  bad  enough  for  a  bad  world.  To  a  practical 
man  nothing  is  so  absurd  as  the  lack  of  worldly 
shrewdness.  The  very  complaint  of  the  literary 
life  that  it  does  not  amass  wealth  and  live  in  pal 
aces  is  the  scorn  of  the  practical  man,  for  he  can 
not  understand  that  intellectual  opacity  which 
prevents  the  literary  man  from  seeing  the  neces 
sity  of  the  different  pecuniary  condition.  It  is 


138  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

clear  enough  to  the  publisher  who  lays  up  fifty 
thousand  a  year  why  the  author  ends  the  year  in 
debt.  But  the  author  is  amazed  that  he  who  deals 
in  ideas  can  only  dine  upon  occasional  chops, 
while  the  man  who  merely  binds  and  sells  ideas 
sits  down  to  perpetual  sirloin.  If  they  should 
change  places,  fortune  would  change  with  them. 
The  publisher  turned  author  would  still  lay  up  his 
thousands;  the  publishing  author  would  still  direct 
ly  lose  thousands.  It  is  simply  because  it  is  a  matter 
of  prudence,  economy,  and  knowledge  of  the  world. 
Thomas  Hood  made  his  ten  thousand  dollars  a 
year,  but  if  he  lived  at  the  rate  of  fifteen  thousand 
he  would  hardly  die  rich.  Mr.  Jerdan,  a  gentle 
man  who,  in  his  Autobiography r,  advises  energetic 
youth  to  betake  themselves  to  the  highway  rather 
than  to  literature,  was,  we  understand,  in  the  re 
ceipt  of  an  easy  income,  and  was  a  welcome  guest 
in  pleasant  houses ;  but  living  in  a  careless,  shift 
less,  extravagant  way,  he  was  presently  poor,  and, 
instead  of  giving  his  memoirs  the  motto,  peccavi, 
and  inditing  a  warning,  he  dashes  off  a  truculent 
defiance.  Practical  publishers  and  practical  men 
of  all  sorts  invest  their  earnings  in  Michigan  Cen 
tral  or  Cincinnati  and  Dayton  instead,  in  steady 
works  and  devoted  days,  and  reap  a  pleasant  har 
vest  of  dividends.  Our  friends  the  authors  in 
vest  in  prime  Havanas,  Rhenish,  in  oyster  suppers, 


TEA  CKERA  T  ZV  AMERICA  139 

]ove  and  leisure,  and  divide  a  heavy  percentage  of 
headache,  dyspepsia,  and  debt. 

This  is  as  true  a  view,  from  another  point,  as 
the  one  we  have  already  taken.  If  the  literary 
life  has  the  pleasures  of  freedom,  it  has  also  its 
pains.  It  may  be  willing  to  resign  the  queen's 
drawing-room,  with  the  illustrious  galaxy  of  stars 
and  garters,  for  the  chamber  with  a  party  no 
bler  than  the  nobility.  The  author's  success  is  of 
a  wholly  different  kind  from  that  of  the  publisher, 
and  he  is  thoughtless  who  demands  both.  Mr. 
Eoe,  who  sells  sugar,  naturally  complains  that  Mr. 
Doe,  who  sells  molasses,  makes  money  more  rap 
idly.  But  Mr.  Tennyson,  who  writes  poems,  can 
hardly  make  the  same  complaint  of  Mr.  Moxon, 
who  publishes  them,  as  was  very  fairly  shown  in  a 
number  of  the  Westminster  Review,  when  notic 
ing  Mr.  Jerdan's  book. 

What  we  have  said  is  strictly  related  to  Mr. 
Thackeray's  lectures,  which  discuss  literature.  All 
the  men  he  commemorated  were  illustrations  and 
exponents  of  the  career  of  letters.  They  all,  in  va 
rious  ways,  showed  the  various  phenomena  of  the 
temperament.  And  when  in  treating  of  them  the 
critic  came  to  Steele,  he  found  one  who  was  one 
of  the  most  striking  illustrations  of  one  of  the 
most  universal  aspects  of  literary  life — the  simple- 
hearted,  unsuspicious,  gay  gallant  and  genial  gen- 


140  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

tleman ;  ready  with  his  sword  or  his  pen,  with  a 
smile  or  a  tear,  the  fair  representative  of  the  so 
cial  tendency  of  his  life.  It  seems  to  us  that  the 
Thackeray  theory — the  conclusion  that  he  is  a  man 
who  loves  to  depict  madness,  and  has  no  sensibili 
ties  to  the  finer  qualities  of  character — crumbled 
quite  away  before  that  lecture  upon  Steele.  We 
know  that  it  was  not  considered  the  best ;  we 
know  that  many  of  the  delighted  audience  were 
not  sufficiently  familiar  with  literary  history  fully 
to  understand  the  position  of  the  man  in  the  lect 
urer's  review ;  but,  as  a  key  to  Thackeray,  it  was, 
perhaps,  the  most  valuable  of  all.  We  know  in 
literature  of  no  more  gentle  treatment ;  we  have 
not  often  encountered  in  men  of  the  most  rigorous 
and  acknowledged  virtue  such  humane  tenderness; 
we  have  not  often  heard  from  the  most  clerical 
lips  words  of  such  genuine  Christianity.  Steele's 
was  a  character  which  makes  weakness  amiable : 
it  was  a  weakness,  if  you  will,  but  it  was  certain 
ly  amiability,  and  it  was  a  combination  more  at 
tractive  than  many  full-panoplied  excellences.  It 
was  not  presented  as  a  model.  Captain  Steele  in 
the  tap-room  was  not  painted  as  the  ideal  of  virtu 
ous  manhood  ;  but  it  certainly  was  intimated  that 
many  admirable  things  were  consonant  with  a  free 
use  of  beer.  It  was  frankly  stated  that  if,  in 
that  character,  virtue  abounded,  cakes  and  ale  did 


MUNIVERSITT) 

TEA.  CKER±  T  ri^BigM$61{H\k^^  141 

much  more  abound.  Captain  Richard  Steele 
might  have  behaved  much  better  than  he  did,  but 
we  should  then  have  never  heard  of  him.  A  few 
fine  essays  do  not  float  a  man  into  immortality, 
but  the  generous  character,  the  heart  sweet  in  all 
excesses  and  under  all  chances,  is  a  spectacle  too 
beautiful  and  too  rare  to  be  easily  forgotten.  A 
man  is  better  than  many  books.  Even  a  man  who 
is  not  immaculate  may  have  more  virtuous  influ 
ence  than  the  discreetest  saint.  Let  us  remember 
how  fondly  the  old  painters  lingered  round  the 
story  of  Magdalen,  and  thank  Thackeray  for  his 
full-length  Steele. 

We  conceive  this  to  be  the  chief  result  of  Thack 
eray's  visit,  that  he  convinced  us  of  his  intellectual 
integrity ;  he  showed  us  how  impossible  it  is  for 
him  to  see  the  world  and  describe  it  other  than  he 
does.  He  does  not  profess  cynicism,  nor  satirize 
society  with  malice ;  there  is  no  man  more  hum 
ble,  none  more  simple ;  his  interests  are  human 
and  concrete,  not  abstract.  We  have  already  said 
that  he  looks  through  and  through  at  the  fact.  It 
is  easy  enough,  and  at  some  future  time  it  will  be 
done,  to  deduce  the  peculiarity  of  his  writings 
from  the  character  of  his  mind.  There  is  no  man 
who  masks  so  little  as  he  in  assuming  the  author. 
His  books  are  his  observations  reduced  to  writing. 
It  seems  to  us  as  singular  to  demand  that  Dante 


142  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

should  be  like  Shakespeare  as  to  quarrel  with 
Thackeray's  want  of  what  is  called  ideal  portrait 
ure.  Even  if  you  thought,  from  reading  his  Van 
ity  Fair,  that  he  had  no  conception  of  noble  wom 
en,  certainly  after  the  lecture  upon  Swift,  after  all 
the  lectures,  in  which  every  allusion  to  women 
was  so  manly  and  delicate  and  sympathetic,  you 
thought  so  no  longer.  It  is  clear  that  his  sympa 
thy  is  attracted  to  women — to  that  which  is  essen 
tially  womanly,  feminine.  Qualities  common  to 
both  sexes  do  not  necessarily  charm  him  because 
he  finds  them  in  women.  A  certain  degree  of 
goodness  must  always  be  assumed.  It  is  only  the 
rare  flowering  that  inspires  special  praise.  You 
call  Amelia's  fondness  for  George  Osborne  fool 
ish,  fond  idolatry.  Thackeray  smiles,  as  if  all  love 
were  not  idolatry  of  the  fondest  foolishness.  What 
was  Hero's  —  what  was  Francesco  di  Rimini's — 
what  was  Juliet's  ?  They  might  have  been  more 
brilliant  women  than  Amelia,  and  their  idols  of  a 
larger  mould  than  George,  but  the  love  was  the 
same  old  foolish,  fond  idolatry.  The  passion  of 
love  and  a  profound  and  sensible  knowledge,  re 
gard  based  upon  prodigious  knowledge  of  charac 
ter  and  appreciation  of  talent,  are  different  things. 
What  is  the  historic  and  poetic  splendor  of  love 
but  the  very  fact,  which  constantly  appears  in 
Thackeray's  stories,  namely,  that  it  is  a  glory  which 


THA  CKERA  T  IN  AMERICA  143 

dazzles  and  blinds.  Men  rarely  love  the  women 
they  ought  to  love,  according  to  the  ideal  stand 
ards.  It  is  this  that  makes  the  plot  and  mystery 
of  life.  Is  it  not  the  perpetual  surprise  of  all 
Jane's  friends  that  she  should  love  Timothy  in 
stead  of  Thomas?  and  is  not  the  courtly  and 
accomplished  Thomas  sure  to  surrender  to  some 
accidental  Lucy  without  position,  wealth,  style, 
worth,  culture— without  anything  but  heart  ?  This 
is  the  fact,  and  it  reappears  in  Thackeray,  and  it 
gives  his  books  that  air  of  reality  which  they  pos 
sess  beyond  all  modern  story. 

And  it  is  this  single  perception  of  the  fact 
which,  simple  as  it  is,  is  the  rarest  intellectual 
quality  that  made  his  lectures  so  interesting.  The 
sun  rose  again  upon  the  vanished  century,  and 
lighted  those  historic  streets.  The  wits  of  Queen 
Anne  ruled  the  hour,  and  we  were  bidden  to  their 
feast.  Much  reading  of  history  and  memoirs  had 
not  so  sent  the  blood  into  those  old  English  cheeks, 
and  so  moved  those  limbs  in  proper  measure,  as 
these  swift  glances  through  the  eyes  of  genius. 
It  was  because,  true  to  himself,  Thackeray  gave 
us  his  impression  of  those  wits  as  men  rather  than 
authors.  For  he  loves  character  more  than  thought. 
He  is  a  man  of  the  world,  and  not  a  scholar.  He 
interprets  the  author  by  the  man.  When  you  are 
made  intimate  with  young  Swift,  Sir  "William  Tern- 


144  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

pie's  saturnine  secretary,  you  more  intelligently 
appreciate  the  Dean  of  St.  Patrick's.  "When  the 
surplice  of  Mr.  Sterne  is  raised  a  little,  more  is 
seen  than  the  reverend  gentleman  intends.  Ho 
garth,  the  bluff  Londoner,  necessarily  depicts  a 
bluff,  coarse,  obvious  morality.  The  hearty  Field 
ing,  the  cool  Addison,  the  genial  Goldsmith,  these 
are  the  figures  that  remain  in  memory,  and  their 
works  are  valuable  as  they  indicate  the  man. 

Mr.  Thackeray's  success  was  very  great.  He  did 
not  visit  the  West,  nor  Canada.  He  went  home 
without  seeing  Niagara  Falls.  But  wherever  he 
did  go  he  found  a  generous  and  social  welcome, 
and  a  respectful  and  sympathetic  hearing.  He 
came  to  fulfil  no  mission,  but  he  certainly  knit 
more  closely  our  sympathy  with  Englishmen. 
Heralded  by  various  romantic  memoirs,  he  smiled 
at  them,  stoutly  asserted  that  he  had  been  always 
able  to  command  a  good  dinner,  and  to  pay  for  it; 
nor  did  he  seek  to  disguise  that  he  hoped  his 
American  tour  would  help  him  to  command  and 
pay  for  more.  He  promised  not  to  write  a  book 
about  us,  but  we  hope  he  will,  for  we  can  ill  spare 
the  criticism  of  such  an  observer.  At  least,  we 
may  be  sure  that  the  material  gathered  here  will 
be  worked  up  in  some  way.  He  found  that  we 
were  not  savages  nor  bores.  He  found  that  there 
were  a  hundred  here  for  every  score  in  England 


THACKERAY  IN  AMERICA  145 

who  knew  well  and  loved  the  men  of  whom  he 
spoke.  He  found  that  the  same  red  blood  colors 
all  the  lips  that  speak  the  language  he  so  nobly 
praised.  He  found  friends  instead  of  critics.  He 
found  those  who,  loving  the  author,  loved  the 
man  more.  He  found  a  quiet  welcome  from  those 
who  are  waiting  to  welcome  him  again  and  as  sin 
cerely. 


SIR   PHILIP   SIDNEY 


SIE  PHILIP  SIDNEY 

"WEARIED  of  the  world  and  saddened  by  the 
ruin  of  his  fortunes,  the  Italian  Count  Maddalo 
turned  from  the  street,  which  rang  with  tales  of 
disaster  and  swarmed  with  melancholy  faces,  into 
his  palace.  Perplexed  and  anxious,  he  passed 
through  the  stately  rooms  in  which  hung  the  por 
traits  of  generations  of  ancestors.  The  day  was 
hot;  his  blood  was  feverish,  but  the  pictures  seemed 
to  him  cool  and  remote  in  a  holy  calm.  He  looked 
at  them  earnestly;  he  remembered  the  long  his 
tory  of  which  his  fathers  were  parts,  he  recalled 
their  valor  and  their  patience,  and  asked  himself 
whether,  after  all,  their  manhood  was  not  their 
patent  of  nobility ;  and  stretching  out  his  hands 
towards  them,  exclaimed :  "  Let  me  feel  that  I 
am  indeed  your  son  by  sharing  that  manhood 
which  made  you  noble." 

We  Americans  laugh  at  ancestors;  and  if  the 
best  of  them  came  back  again,  we  should  be  as 
likely  to  laugh  at  his  wig  as  listen  to  his  wisdom. 
And  in  our  evanescent  houses  and  uneasy  life  we 


150  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

would  no  more  have  ancient  ranges  of  family  pict 
ures  than  Arabs  in  their  tents.  Yet  we  are  con 
stantly  building  and  visiting  the  greatest  portrait 
gallery  of  all  in  the  histories  we  write  and  read; 
and  the  hour  is  never  lost  which  we  give  to  it. 
It  may  teach  a  maid  humility  to  know  that  her 
mother  was  fairer.  It  may  make  a  youth  more 
modest  to  know  that  his  grandsire  was  braver. 
For  if  the  pictures  of  history  show  us  that  de 
formity  is  as  old  as  grace,  and  that  virtue  was  al 
ways  martyred,  they  also  show  that  crime,  how 
ever  prosperous  for  a  time,  is  at  last  disastrous, 
and  that  there  can  be  no  permanent  peace  without 
justice  and  freedom. 

Those  pictures  teach  us  also  that  character  is  in 
herited  like  name  and  treasure,  and  that  all  of  us 
may  have  famous  or  infamous  ancestors  perhaps 
without  knowing  it.  The  melancholy  poet,  eating 
his  own  heart  out  in  a  city  garret,  is  the  child  of 
Tasso.  Grinding  Ralph  Nickleby,  the  usurer,  is 
Shylock's  grandson.  The  unjust  judge,  who  de 
clares  that  some  men  have  no  rights  which  others 
are  bound  to  respect,  is  a  later  Jeffries  on  his 
bloody  assizes,  or  dooming  Algernon  Sidney  to  the 
block  once  more  for  loving  liberty;  while  he 
whose  dull  heart  among  the  new  duties  of  another 
time  is  never  quickened  with  public  spirit,  and 
who  as  a  citizen  aims  only  at  his  own  selfish  ad- 


SIR  PHILIP  SIDNEY  151 

vantage,  is  a  later  Benedict  Arnold  whom  every 
generous  heart  despises. 

From  this  lineage  of  character  arises  this  great 
convenience — that  as  it  is  bad  manners  to  criticise 
our  neighbors  by  name,  we  may  hit  them  many  a 
sly  rap  over  the  shoulders  of  their  ancestors  who 
wore  turbans,  or  helmets,  or  bagwigs,  and  lived 
long  ago  in  other  countries.  The  Church  espe 
cially  finds  great  comfort  in  this  resource,  and  the 
backs  of  the  whole  Hebrew  race  must  be  sore  with 
the  scorings  they  get  for  the  sins  of  Christian  con 
gregations.  The  timid  Peter,  the  foolish  Yirgins, 
the  wicked  Herod,  are  pilloried  every  Sunday  in 
the  pulpit,  to  the  great  satisfaction  of  the  Peters, 
Yirgins,  and  Herods  dozing  in  the  pews.  But 
when  some  ardent  preacher,  heading  out  of  his 
metaphors,  and  jumping  from  Judea  and  the  first 
century  into  the  United  States  and  the  nine 
teenth,  disturbs  Peter's  enjoyment  of  his  ances 
tors  castigation  by  saying  vehemently  to  his  face 
with  all  the  lightning  of  the  law  in  his  eye,  and 
its  thunders  in  his  voice,  "  Thou  art  the  man !" 
Peter  recoils  with  decorous  horror,  begs  his  pas 
tor  to  remember  that  he  and  Herod  are  sheep 
who  were  to  be  led  by  still  waters;  warns  him 
not  to  bring  politics  into  the  pulpit,  to  talk  not 
of  living  people,  but  of  old  pictures.  So  the 
poor  shepherd  is  driven  back  to  his  pictures, 


152  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

and  cudgels  Peter  once  more  from  behind  a  met 
aphor. 

But  the  fairest  use  of  these  old  pictures  is  to 
make  us  feel  our  common  humanity,  and  to  dis 
cover  that  what  seems  to  us  a  hopelessly  romantic 
ideal  of  character  is  a  familiar  fact  of  every  day. 
Heroism  is  always  the  same,  however  the  fashion 
of  a  hero's  clothes  may  alter.  Every  hero  in  his 
tory  is  as  near  to  a  man  as  his  neighbor,  and  if 
we  should  tell  the  simple  truth  of  some  of  our 
neighbors,  it  would  sound  like  poetry.  Sir  Philip 
Sidney  wore  doublet  and  hose,  and  died  in  Flanders 
three  hundred  years  ago.  His  name  is  the  synonym 
of  manly  honor,  of  generous  scholarship,  of  the 
finest  nobility,  of  the  spiritual  light  that  most 
irradiates  human  nature.  Look  at  his  portrait 
closely ;  it  is  no  stranger  that  you  see ;  it  is  no 
far-off  Englishman.  It  is  your  friend,  your  son, 
your  brother,  your  lover.  Whoever  knew  Wendell 
Phillips  knew  Philip  Sidney.  It  is  the  same  spirit 
in  a  thousand  forms;  a  perpetual  presence,  a  con 
stant  benediction :  Look  at  his  portrait  and 

"The  night  shall  be  filled  with  music, 

And  the  cares  that  infest  the  day 
Shall  fold  their  tents  like  the  Arabs, 
And  as  silently  steal  away." 

The  gray  walls,  the  red  and  peaked  roof  of  the 
old  house  of  Penshurst,  stand  in  the  pleasant  Eng- 


SIX  PHILIP  SIDXEY  153 

lish  valley  of  the  Medway,  in  soft  and  showery 
Kent.  Kent  is  all  garden,  and  there,  in  Novem 
ber,  1554,  Philip  Sidney  was  born.  His  father, 
Sir  Henry  Sidney,  was  a  wise  and  honest  man. 
Bred  at  court,  his  sturdy  honor  was  never  cor 
rupted.  King  Edward  died  in  his  arms,  and  Queen 
Mary  confirmed  all  his  honors  and  offices  three 
weeks  before  the  birth  of  his  oldest  son,  whom,  in 
gratitude,  he  named  Philip,  for  the  queen's  new 
Spanish  husband.  Philip's  mother  was  Mary  Dud 
ley,  daughter  of  the  Duke  of  Northumberland, 
sister  of  the  famous  Earl  of  Leicester,  sister  also 
of  Lord  Guildford  Dudley  and  sister-in-law  of 
Lady  Jane  Grey.  The  little  Philip  was  born 
into  a  sad  household.  Within  fifteen  months  his 
grandfather  and  uncle  had  been  beheaded  for  trea 
son  ;  and  his  sorrowing  mother,  a  truly  noble  and 
tender  woman,  had  been  the  victim  of  small-pox, 
and  hid  her  grieving  heart  and  poor  scarred  face 
in  the  silence  and  seclusion  of  Penshurst.  On  the 
south  side  of  the  house  was  the  old  garden  or 
plaisance,  sloping  down  to  the  Medway,  where,  in 
those  English  summers  of  three  hundred  years 
ago,  when  the  cruel  fires  of  Mary  were  busily 
burning  at  Smithfield,  the  lovely  boy  Philip, 
fair -featured,  with  a  high  forehead  and  ruddy 
brown  hair,  almost  red — the  same  color  as  that  of 
his  nephew  Algernon — walked  with  his  shy  moth- 


154  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

er,  picking  daisies  and  chasing  butterflies,  and  call 
ing  to  her  in  a  soft,  musical  voice ;  while  within 
the  house  the  grave  father,  when  he  was  not  away 
in  Wales,  of  which  he  was  lord -president,  mused 
upon  great  events  that  were  stirring  in  Europe — 
the  abdication  of  Charles  Y.,  the  fall  of  Calais, 
and  the  accession  of  Queen  Elizabeth  to  the  throne 
of  England.  The  lordly  banqueting-hall,  in  which 
the  politics  of  three  centuries  ago  were  discussed 
at  Penshurst,  is  still  standing.  You  may  still  sit 
upon  the  wooden  benches  where  Burleigh,  Spen 
ser,  Ben  Jorison,  James  I.,  and  his  son  Prince 
Charles  have  sat,  and  where,  a  little  later,  the  vic 
tim  of  Prince  Charles's  cruel  son,  Algernon  Sid 
ney,  dreamed  of  noble  manhood  and  went  forth  a 
noble  man  ;  while  in  those  shady  avenues  of  beech 
and  oak  outside,  smooth  Edmund  Waller  bowed 
and  smirked,  and  sighed  compliments  to  his  Sacha- 
rissa,  as  he  called  Dorothy  Sidney,  Algernon's 
sister. 

At  the  age  of  eleven  Master  Sidney  was  put  to 
school  at  Shrewsbury,  on  the  borders  of  Wales,  of 
which  country  his  father  was  lord-president.  His 
fond  friend,  Fulke  Greville,  who  was  here  at  school 
with  him,  and  afterwards  wrote  his  life,  says  that 
even  the  masters  found  something  in  him  to  ob 
serve  and  learn.  Study  probably  cost  him  little 
effort  and  few  tears.  We  may  be  sure  he  stood  at 


SIR  PHILIP  SIDNEY  155 

the  head  of  his  class,  and  was  a  grave,  good  boy — 
not  good  as  calves  and  blanc-mange  are,  but  like 
wine  and  oak  saplings.  "Hy  little  Philip,"  as  his 
mother  tenderly  calls  him,  was  no  Miss  Nancy. 
When  he  was  older  he  wrote  to  his  brother  Rob 
ert,  then  upon  his  travels,  that  "  if  there  were  any 
good  wars  he  should  go  to  them."  So,  at  Shrews 
bury  he  doubtless  went  to  all  the  good  wars  among 
his  school-mates,  while  during  the  short  intervals 
of  peace  he  mastered  his  humanities,  and  at  last, 
when  not  yet  fifteen  years  old,  he  was  entered 
at  Christ  Church,  Oxford. 

Great  good-fortune  is  the  most  searching  test  of 
character.  If  a  man  have  fine  friends,  fine  family, 
fine  talents,  and  fine  prospects,  they  are  very  like 
ly  to  be  the  sirens  in  whose  sweet  singing  he  for 
gets  everything  but  the  pleasure  of  listening  to  it. 
If  most  of  us  had  come  of  famous  ancestry — if  our 
father  were  a  vice-regal  governor  —  if  the  sover 
eign's  favorite  were  our  uncle,  who  intended  us 
for  his  heir — if  a  marriage  were  proposed  with  the 
beautiful  daughter  of  the  prime-minister,  and  we 
were  ourselves  young,  handsome,  and  accomplished 
— and  all  this  were  three  hundred  years  ago,  be 
fore  the  rights  of  men  and  the  dignity  of  labor  had 
been  much  discussed,  we  should  probably  have 
come  up  to  Oxford,  of  which  our  famous  uncle 
was  chancellor,  in  a  state  of  what  would  be  called 


156  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

at  Oxford  to-day  extreme  bumptiousness.  But 
Philip  Sidney  was  too  true  a  gentleman  not  to  be 
a  simple-hearted  man ;  and  although  he  was  even 
then  one  of  the  most  accomplished  as  well  as  fort 
unate  youths  in  England,  he  writes  to  Lord  Bur- 
leigh  to  confess  with  "  heavy  grief  "  that  in  scholar 
ship  he  can  neither  satisfy  Burleigh's  expectation 
nor  his  own  desire. 

In  the  month  of  May,  1572,  Philip  Sidney  left 
Oxford,  and  after  staying  a  short  time  with  his 
parents,  following  the  fashion  of  young  gentlemen 
of  rank,  he  crossed  over  into  France  in  the  train 
of  the  Earl  of  Lincoln,  who  was  Queen  Elizabeth's 
extraordinary  ambassador  upon  the  subject  of  her 
marriage  with  the  brother  of  Charles  IX.  of  France. 
The  young  king  immediately  made  Sidney  a  gen 
tleman  of  the  bedchamber,  and  Henry  of  Navarre 
found  him  a  fit  companion  for  a  future  king. 
The  Paris  that  Sidney  saw  had  then  twice  as  many 
inhabitants  as  Boston  has  to-day.  Montaigne  called 
it  the  most  beautiful  city  in  the  world,  and  it  had 
a  delusive  air  of  peace.  But  the  witch  Catherine 
de'  Medici  sat  in  the  smooth-tongued  court  like  a 
spider  in  its  web,  spinning  and  spinning  the  mesh 
es  in  which  the  hope  of  liberty  was  to  be  entan 
gled.  The  gay  city  filled  and  glittered  with  the 
wedding  guests  of  Henry  and  the  king's  sister 
Margaret — among  others,  the  hero  of  St.  Quentin, 


SIR  PHILIP  SIDNEY  157 

Admiral  Coligny.  Gayer  and  gayer  grew  the  city 
— smoother  and  smoother  the  court — faster  and 
faster  spun  the  black  Italian  spider — until  on  the 
23d  of  August,  the  Eve  of  St.  Bartholomew,  the 
bloodiest  deed  in  all  the  red  annals  of  that  metrop 
olis  was  done,  and  the  young  Sidney  looked  shud 
dering  from  "Walsingham  House  upon  the  streets 
reeking  with  the  blood  of  his  fellow  Huguenots. 

That  night  made  Philip  Sidney  a  man.  He 
heard  the  applause  of  the  Romish  party  ring 
through  Europe — he  heard  the  commendation  of 
Philip  of  Spain — he  knew  that  the  most  elo 
quent  orator  of  the  Church,  Muretus,  had  con 
gratulated  the  pope  upon  this  signal  victory  of 
the  truth.  He  knew  that  medals  were  stamped  in 
cornmetrroration  of  the  brutal  massacre,  and  he  re 
membered  that  the  same  spirit  that  had  struck  at 
the  gray  head  of  Coligny  had  also  murdered  Eg- 
mont  and  Home  in  the  Netherlands ;  had  calmly 
gazed  in  the  person  of  Philip  upon  De  Sezo  per 
ishing  in  the  fire,  and  by  the  hand  of  Philip  had 
denounced  death  against  all  who  wrote,  sold,  or 
read  Protestant  books ;  and  he  knew  that  the  same 
spirit,  in  the  most  thriving  and  intelligent  country 
of  Europe,  the  Netherlands,  was  blotting  out  pros 
perity  in  blood,  and  had  driven  at  least  a  hundred 
thousand  exiles  into  England. 

Pondering  these  things,  Sidney  left  Paris,  and 


158  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

at  Frankfort  met  Hubert  Languet.  Languet  was 
not  only  a  Protestant,  but,  at  heart,  a  Republican. 
He  was  the  friend  of  Melancthon  and  of  William 
of  Orange,  in  whose  service  he  died.  One  of  the 
most  accomplished  scholars  and  shrewdest  states 
men  in  Europe,  honored  and  trusted  by  all  the 
Protestant  leaders,  this  wise  man  of  fif tjvfour  was 
so  enamoured  of  the  English  youth  of  eighteen  that 
they  became  life-long  friends  with  the  ardor  of 
lovers,  and  Languet  left  his  employment,  as  Fulke 
Greville  says,  "  to  become  a  nurse  of  knowledge 
to  this  hopeful  young  gentleman." 

As  they  travelled  by  easy  stages  across  Ger 
many,  where  the  campaign  of  Protestantism  had 
begun,  they  knew  that  the  decisive  battle  was  yet 
to  be  fought.  Europe  was  silent.  The  tumult  of 
Charles  Y.'s  reign  was  over,  and  that  great  mon 
arch  marched  and  countermarched  no  more  from 
the  Baltic  to  the  Mediterranean.  Charles  had 
been  victorious  so  long  as  he  fought  kings  with 
words  of  steel.  But  the  monk  Martin  Luther 
drew  the  sword  of  the  spirit,  and  the  conqueror 
quailed.  Luther  challenged  the  Church  of  Rome 
at  its  own  door.  The  Vatican  rained  anathemas. 
It  might  as  well  have  tried  to  blow  out  the  stars ; 
and  all  the  fires  of  the  furious  popes  who  followed 
Leo  were  not  sharp  enough  to  consume  the  colossal 
heresy  of  free  thought.  But  king  and  emperor 


SIR  PHILIP  SIDNEY  159 

and  pope  fed  the  fire.  The  reign  of  terror  blasted 
the  Netherlands,  and  when  it  had  succeeded  there, 
when  Italy,  Austria,  and  Holland  surrounded  the 
states  of  Germany,  Philip  knew  it  would  be  the 
smothering  coil  of  the  serpent  around  the  cradle 
of  religious  liberty.  But  the  young  Hercules  of 
free  thought  throttled  the  serpent,  and  leaped 
forth  to  win  his  victorious  and  immortal  race. 

We  can  see  it  now,  but  Sidney  could  not  know 
it.  To  him  the  future  was  as  inscrutable  as  our 
own  to  the  eyes  of  thirty  years  ago.  Yet  he  and 
Languet  must  have  discussed  the  time  with  curi 
ous  earnestness  as  they  passed  through  Germany 
until  they  reached  Vienna.  There  Sidney  devoted 
himself  to  knightly  games,  to  tennis,  to  music,  and 
especially  to  horsemanship,  which  he  studied  with 
Pagliono,  who,  in  praise  of  the  horse,  became  such 
a  poet  that  in  the  Defence  of  Poesy  Sidney  says 
that  if  he  had  not  been  a  piece  of  a  logician  be 
fore  he  came  to  him,  Pagliono  would  have  per 
suaded  him  to  wish  himself  a  horse. 

At  Vienna  Philip  parted  with  Languet,  and 
arrived  in  Venice  in  the  year  1573.  The  great 
modern  days  of  Italy  were  passed.  The  golden 
age  of  the  Medici  was  gone.  Lorenzo  the  Mag 
nificent  had  died  nearly  a  century  before,  in  the 
same  year  that  Columbus  had  discovered  America. 
His  son,  Pope  Leo  X.,  had  eaten  his  last  ortolan, 


160  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

had  flown  his  last  falcon,  had  listened  to  his  last 
comedy,  and  hummed  his  last  tune,  in  the  frescoed 
corridors  of  the  Vatican.  Upon  its  shining  walls 
the  fatal  finger  of  Martin  Luther,  stretching  out 
of  Germany,  had  written  "  Mene,  Mene."  Be 
neath  the  terrible  spell  the  walls  were  cracking 
and  the  earth  was  shaking,  but  the  splendid  pope, 
in  his  scarlet  cloud  of  cardinals,  saw  only  the  wild 
beauty  of  Raphael's  Madonnas  and  the  pleasant 
pages  of  the  recovered  literature  of  pagan  Greece. 
"When  Sidney  stepped  for  the  first  time  into  his 
gondola  at  Venice,  the  famous  Italian  cathedrals 
and  stately  palaces  were  already  built,  and  the 
great  architects  were  gone.  Dante,  Boccaccio, 
Petrarch,  who  had  created  Italian  literature,  lived 
about  as  long  before  Sidney  as  we  live  after  him. 
Cimabue  and  Giotto  had  begun;  Raphael  and 
Michel  Angelo  had  perfected  that  art  in  which 
they  have  had  no  rivals — and  they  were  gone. 
Andrea  Doria  steered  the  galleys  of  Genoa  no 
more,  and  since  the  discovery  of  the  Cape  of  Good 
Hope  and  the  West  Indies,  the  spices  of  the  Indian 
sea  were  brought  by  Portuguese  ships  into  the 
Baltic  instead  of  the  Adriatic.  The  glory  of  the 
Lombards,  who  were  the  first  merchants  of  Eu 
rope,  had  passed  away  to  the  descendants  of  their 
old  correspondents  of  Bruges  and  Ghent,  until, 
with  its  five  hundred  ships  daily  coming  and  go- 


SIR  PHILIP  SIDNEY  161 

ing,  and  on  market  days  eight  and  nine  hundred; 
with  its  two  thousand  heavy  wagons  creaking 
every  week  through  the  gates  from  France  and 
Germany  and  Lorraine,  Antwerp  reigned  in  the 
place  of  Venice,  and  the  long  twilight  that  has 
never  been  broken  was  settling  upon  the  Italy 
that  Sidney  saw. 

But  the  soft  splendor  of  its  decline  was  worthy 
its  prime.  The  universities  of  Bologna  and  Padua, 
of  Salerno  and  Pisa,  had  fallen  from  the  days 
when  at  Bologna  alone  there  were  twenty  thou 
sand  students;  but  they  were  still  thronged  with 
pupils,  and  taught  by  renowned  professors.  When 
the  young  Sidney  came  to  Venice,  Titian  was  just 
tottering  into  the  grave,  nearly  a  hundred  years  old, 
but  still  holding  the  pencil  which  Charles  V.  had 
picked  up  and  handed  to  him  in  his  studio.  Gali 
leo  was  a  youth  of  twenty,  studying  mathematics 
at  Pisa.  The  melancholy  Tasso  was  completing 
his  Jerusalem  Delivered  under  the  cypress  trees  of 
the  Villa  d'Este.  Palestrina  was  composing  the 
masses  which  reformed  church  music,  and  the 
Christian  charity  of  Charles  Borromeo  was  making 
him  a  saint  before  he  was  canonized.  Clad  in  the 
silk  and  velvet  of  Genoa,  the  young  Englishman 
went  to  study  geometry  at  Padua,  where  twenty 
years  later  Galileo  would  have  been  his  teacher, 

and  Sidney  writes  to  Languet  that  he  was  per 
il 


162  LITERACY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

plexed  whether  to  sit  to  Paul  Veronese  or  to  Tin 
toretto  for  his  portrait. 

But  he  had  a  shrewd  eye  for  the  follies  of  travel 
lers,  and  speaks  of  their  tendency  to  come  home 
"  full  of  disguisements  not  only  of  apparel  but  of 
our  countenances,  as  though  the  credit  of  a  travel 
ler  stood  all  upon  his  outside."  He  then  adds  a 
curious  prophecy,  which  Shakespeare  made  haste 
to  fulfil  to  the  very  letter.  Sidney  says,  writing  in 
1578,  "  I  think,  ere  it  be  long,  like  the  mounte 
banks  in  Italy,  we  travellers  shall  be  made  sport  of 
in  comedies."  Twenty  years  afterwards,  Shake 
speare  makes  Rosalind  say  in  "  As  You  Like  It," 
"  Farewell,  Monsieur  Traveller.  Look  you  ;  lisp, 
and  wear  strange  suits.  Disable  all  the  benefits  of 
your  own  country.  Be  out  of  love  with  your  na 
tivity,  and  almost  chide  God  for  making  you  that 
countenance  you  are,  or  I  will  scarce  think  you 
have  swam  in  a  gondola." 

But  in  all  the  gayeties  and  graces  of  his  travel, 
Philip  Sidney  was  not  content  to  be  merely  an 
elegant  lounger.  He  never  forgot  for  a  moment 
that  all  his  gifts  and  accomplishments  were  only 
weapons  to  be  kept  burnished  for  his  country's 
service.  He  was  a  boy  of  twenty,  but  his  boy's 
warmth  was  tempered  by  the  man's  wisdom. 
"  You  are  not  over  cheerful  by  nature,"  Languet 
writes  to  him;  and  when  Sidney  sat  to  Paul  Yero- 


SIR  PHILIP  SIDXEY  163 

nese,  and  sent  his  friend  the  portrait,  Languet  re 
plies:  "The  painter  has  represented  you  sad  and 
thoughtful." 

He  had  reason  to  be  so.  He  had  seen  the  Mas 
sacre  of  St.  Bartholomew,  as  many  a  young  Sidney 
among  ourselves  saw  the  horrors  of  Kansas  thirty 
years  ago.  He  did  not  believe  that  a  little  timely 
patting  on  the  back  was  statesmanship.  If  Spain 
were  crushing  the  Netherlands,  and  hung  upon  the 
southern  horizon  of  Europe  a  black  and  threaten 
ing  cloud,  he  did  not  believe  that  the  danger 
would  be  averted  by  gagging  those  who  said  the 
storm  was  coming.  He  did  not  hold  the  thermom 
eter  responsible  for  the  weather.  "  I  cannot  think," 
he  wrote  in  May,  1571,  "  there  is  any  man  possessed 
of  common  understanding  who  does  not  see  to 
what  these  rough  storms  are  driving  by  which  all 
Christendom  has  been  agitated  now  these  many 
years."  He  did  not  suppose,  as  so  many  of  us  in 
our  ignoble  days,  that  while  men  were  the  same, 
the  tragical  differences  which  had  been  washed 
out  with  blood  in  all  other  ages  could  be  drowned 
in  milk  and  water  in  his  own. 

In  1575  Sidney  returned  to  England.  Every 
author  who  writes  of  this  period  breaks  out  into 
the  most  glowing  praises  of  him.  Indeed,  he  is 
the  choice  darling  of  English  history.  The  only 
discordant  note  in  the  chorus  of  praise  came  long 


164  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

afterwards  in  the  voice  of  the  pedantic  dandy 
Horace  "Walpole,  who  called  Goldsmith  "an  in 
spired  idiot."  This  is  not  surprising,  for  the  ear 
nestness  and  heroic  simplicity  of  Sidney  were  as 
incomprehensible  to  the  affected  trifler  of  Straw 
berry  Hill  as  the  fresh  enthusiasm  of  his  nephew 
Arthur  to  Major  Pendennis.  The  Earl  of  Leices 
ter,  who  seemed  to  love  his  nephew  more  than 
anything  except  his  own  ambition,  presented  his 
brilliant  young  relative  to  the  queen,  who  made 
him  her  cup-bearer.  Sidney  was  now  twenty-one 
years  old — the  finest  gentleman,  and  one  of  the 
most  accomplished  scholars  in  England.  His  learn 
ing  was  mainly  in  the  classics  and  in  languages; 
yet  he  confesses  that  he  could  never  learn  German, 
which  was  then  hardly  worth  learning,  and  in  his 
correspondence  with  Languet  is  very  distrustful  of 
the  Latin,  in  which  language  they  wrote.  But  in 
urging  him  to  grapple  with  the  German,  Languet 
says  to  him,  and  it  is  a  striking  proof  of  the  ex 
quisite  finish  of  Sidney's  accomplishment,  "I  have 
•watched  you  closely  when  speaking  my  own  lan 
guage  (he  was  a  Burgundian),  but  I  hardly  ever  de 
tected  you  pronouncing  a  single  syllable  wrongly." 
In  Sidney's  time  the  classics  had  few  rivals. 
After  reading  Dante,  Petrarch,  Ariosto,  Boccac 
cio,  with  Sanazzaro's  Arcadia,  in  Italian;  Rabe 
lais,  Froissart,  and  Comines,  in  French ;  Chaucer, 


SIR  PHILIP  SIDNEY  165 

Gower,  and  the  Mirror  for  Magistrates  in  Eng 
lish,  what  remained  for  an  ardent  young  student 
to  devour  ?  When  Sidney  came  home,  Mon 
taigne — whom  he  probably  saw  at  the  French 
court — was  just  writing  his  Essays  at  his  chateau 
in  the  Gironde.  The  Portuguese  Camoens  had 
only  just  published  his  great  poem,  to  which  his 
own  country  would  not  listen,  and  of  which  no 
other  had  heard.  The  Italian  Tasso's  Jerusalem 
was  still  in  manuscript,  and  the  Spanish  Ponce  de 
Leon  was  little  known  to  Europe.  All  was  yet  to 
come.  In  Spain,  Cervantes,  Lope  de  Vega,  and 
Calderon  ;  in  France,  Corneille  and  Racine  and 
Moliere,  Fenelon  and  Bossnet,  Rousseau  and  Vol 
taire  ;  in  Germany,  everything  except  the  Niebe- 
lungen  and  Hans  Sachs's  rhymes.  "When  Philip 
Sidney  kissed  Elizabeth's  hand  as  her  cnp-bearer, 
"William  Shakespeare,  a  boy  of  eleven,  was  grind 
ing  out  his  trousers  on  the  restless  seats  of  the 
free  grammar-school  at  Stratford  ;  young  Francis 
Bacon,  a  youth  of  sixteen,  was  studying  in  France ; 
a  poor  scholar  at  Cambridge,  Edmund  Spenser 
was  just  finishing  his  studies,  and  the  younger 
brother  of  an  old  Devonshire  family,  Walter  Ra 
leigh,  had  just  returned  from  campaigning  in 
France;  indeed, all  the  literature  of  modern  timesl 
was  subsequent  to  Philip  Sidney.  The  young 
man  shone  at  court,  fascinating  men  and  women, 


166  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

courtiers,  scholars,  and  divines ;  and  in  a  few 
months  was  made  special  ambassador  to  condole 
with  the  Austrian  emperor  upon  the  death  of  his 
father.  Upon  this  embassy  he  departed  in  great 
state.  His  mission  was  supposed  to  be  purely 
complimentary ;  but  he  was  really  the  beautiful 
eye  with  which  England  and  Elizabeth,  becoming 
the  head  of  the  Protestant  movement,  watched 
the  disposition  of  the  Protestant  princes.  On  his 
way  home,  Sidney  passed  into  the  Low  Countries 
to  see  William  of  Orange.  He  came,  resplendent 
with  chivalric  magnificence,  accompanied  by  the 
flower  of  English  nobility,  and  met  the  grave 
William,  who  had  been  the  richest  citizen  in  the 
Netherlands,  clad  in  an  old  serge  cloak,  and  sur 
rounded  by  plain  Dutch  burghers.  But  it  was  a 
meeting  of  men  of  one  mind  and  heart  in  the 
great  cause,  and  neither  was  disturbed  by  the  tail 
oring  of  the  other.  The  interview  was  the  be 
ginning  of  a  faithful  friendship,  and  among  all 
the  compliments  Sidney  received,  none  is  so  lofty 
and  touching  as  that  of  William,  the  greatest  man 
in  Europe,  who  called  him  in  their  correspond 
ence,  "Philip,  my  master." 

In  1577  Sidney  was  home  again.  He  had  a 
right  to  expect  conspicuous  advancement,  but  he 
got  nothing.  This  was  the  more  disagreeable,  be 
cause  living  at  Elizabeth's  court  was  an  expensive 


SIR  P2ILIP  S1DNE1  167 

luxury  for  a  poor  gentleman's  son  who  had  mag 
nificent  tastes.  His  father,  Lord  Henry  Sidney, 
was  lord -deputy  of  Ireland,  but  he  was  also  an 
honest  man,  and,  like  most  honest  men  in  high 
public  office,  he  was  not  rich.  He  wrote  to  Philip, 
begging  him  to  remember  whose  son,  riot  whose 
nephew,  he  was ;  for  Philip's  companions,  the 
golden  youth  of  the  court,  blazed  in  silks  and  vel 
vets  and  jewels,  until  the  government  had  to  im 
pose  laws,  as  the  subjects  had  brought  luxury  from 
Venice,  and  Elizabeth,  who  died  the  happy  owner 
of  three  thousand  dresses,  issued  a  solemn  proc 
lamation  against  extravagance  in  dress. 

At  such  a  time,  the  brilliant  nephew  of  Uncle 
Leicester  would  have  been  a  quickly  ruined  man  if 
he  had  not  been  Philip  Sidney.  He  bowed  and 
flirted  at  court,  but  he  chafed  under  inaction.  A 
marriage  was  planned  for  him  with  Penelope  De- 
vereux,  sister  of  the  famous  Earl  of  Essex,  one  of 
the  thousand  fair  and  unfortunate  women  who 
flit  across  the  page  of  history  leaving  only  a  name, 
and  that  written  in  tears.  But  Philip's  father 
grew  cool  in  the  negotiation,  and  Philip  himself 
was  perfectly  passive.  Yet  when  a  few  years 
afterwards  the  lady  was  married  to  Lord  Rich,  who 
abused  her,  Sidney  loved  her,  and  wrote  the  son 
nets  to  Stella,  which  are  his  best  poetry,  and  which 
Charles  Lamb  so  affectionately  praised. 


168  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

But  while  he  loitered  at  court,  beating  all  the 
courtiers  with  their  own  weapons  in  wit,  in  riding, 
in  games,  at  tournament,  the  tales  of  American 
discovery  shed  a  wondrous  glamour  upon  the  new 
continent.  Nothing  was  too  beautiful  for  belief, 
and  the  fiery  feet  of  youth  burned  the  English  soil 
with  eagerness  to  tread  the  unutterable  Tropics. 
Francis  Drake  sailed  from  Plymouth  to  follow 
Magellan  around  the  world,  and  he  went  in  a  man 
ner  consonant  with  the  popular  fancy  of  the  count 
less  riches  that  rewarded  such  adventures.  His 
cooking-vessels  were  of  silver;  his  table-plate  of 
exquisite  workmanship.  The  queen  knighted 
him,  gave  him  a  sword,  and  said,  "  Whoever  strik- 
eth  at  you,  Drake,  striketh  at  us."  A  band  of 
musicians  accompanied  the  fleet,  and  the  English 
sailor  went  to  circumnavigate  the  globe  with  the 
same  nonchalant  magnificence  with  which  in  other 
days  the  gorgeous  Alcibiades,  with  flutes  and  soft 
recorders  blowing  under  silken  sails,  came  idling 
home  from  victory. 

Philip  Sidney,  his  heart  alive  to  all  romance, 
and  longing  to  be  his  companion,  saw  him  sail 
away.  But  he  turned  and  saw  the  black  Italian 
spider,  whose  sting  he  had  seen  on  Bartholomew's 
Eve  in  Paris,  still  weaving  her  stealthy  web,  and 
seeking  to  entangle  Elizabeth  into  a  match  with 
the  Duke  of  Anjou.  The  queen  was  forty-six, 


SIR  PHILIP  SIDNEY  169 

and  Mounseer,  as  the  English  called  him,  twenty- 
three  ;  and  while  she  was  coaxing  herself  to  say  the 
most  fatal  yes  that  ever  woman  said — when  Bur- 
leigh,  Leicester,  Walsingham,  all  the  safe,  sound, 
conservative  old  gentlemen  and  counsellors  were 
just  ceasing  to  dissuade  her — Philip  Sidney,  a 
youth  of  twenty-five,  who  knew  that  he  had  a 
country  as  well  as  a  queen,  that  the  hope  of  that 
country  lay  in  the  triumph  of  Protestantism,  and 
that  to  marry  Mounseer  was  to  abandon  that  hope, 
and  for  the  time  betray  mankind — Philip  Sidney, 
a  youth  who  did  not  believe  that  he  could  write 
gravely  of  sober  things  because  he  had  written 
gayly  of  ladies'  eyebrows,  knowing  as  the  true- 
hearted  gentleman  always  knows  that  to-day  it 
may  be  a  man's  turn  to  sit  at  a  desk  in  an  office, 
or  bend  over  a  book  in  college,  or  fashion  a 
horseshoe  at  the  forge,  or  toss  flowers  to  some 
beauty  at  her  window,  and  to-morrow  to  stand 
firm  against  a  cruel  church  or  a  despotic  court,  a 
brutal  snob  or  an  ignorant  public  opinion — this 
youth,  this  immortal  gentleman,  wrote  the  letter 
which  dissuaded  her  from  the  marriage,  and 
which  was  as  noble  a  triumph  for  Protestantism 
and  human  liberty  as  the  defeat  of  the  Spanish 
Armada. 

I  cannot  follow  this  lovely  life  in  detail,  nor 
linger,  as  I  would,  upon  his  literary  retirement. 


€OF  THE 
IVERSI 


170  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

The  very  name  of  Sidney's  Arcadia  is  aromatic 
in  the  imagination,  and  its  traditional  place  in  our 
literature  is  unquestioned.  In  our  day  it  is  very 
little  read,  nor  is  it  a  very  interesting  story.  But 
under  its  quaint  and  courtly  conceit  its  tone  is  so 
pure  and  lofty,  its  courtesy  and  appreciation  of 
women  so  hearty  and  honorable ;  it  has  so  fine  a 
moral  atmosphere,  such  noble  thoughts,  such 
stately  and  beautiful  descriptions,  that  to  read  it 
is  like  conversing  with  a  hero.  So  there  is  no 
better  reading  than  the  Defence  of  Poesy,  that 
noble  hymn  of  loyalty  to  intellectual  beauty. 
Hallam  well  calls  Sidney  "  the  first  good  prose 
writer"  in  our  language,  and  scarcely  had  he  fin 
ished  in  his  Defence  an  exquisite  criticism  of 
English  poetry  to  that  time  than  the  full  choir  of 
Elizabethan  poets  burst  into 

"  the  songs  that  fill 
The  spacious  times  of  great  Elizabeth 
With  sounds  that  echo  still." 

In  1582  Philip  Sidney  married  the  daughter  of 
Walsingham,  but  in  his  retirement,  whether  stead 
fastly  watching  the  great  struggle  upon  the  Con 
tinent  or  listening  to  the  alluring  music  of  far-off 
seas,  he  knew  that  the  choice  days  of  his  life  were 
passing,  and  if  a  career  were  not  opened  for  him 
by  the  queen,  he  must  make  one  for  himself. 
William  of  Orange  had  been  murdered  ;  Eliza- 


SIR  PHILIP  SIDNEY  171 

beth  promptly  succeeded  him  as  the  active  head 
of  the  Protestant  world  ;  Philip  of  Spain  was  the 
great  enemy.  Strike  him  at  home,  said  Sidney; 
strike  him  at  sea,  but  strike  him  everywhere;  and 
he  arranged  with  Drake  a  descent  upon  Spanish 
America.  He  hurried  privately  to  Plymouth  to 
embark,  but  at  the  last  moment  a  peer  of  the 
realm  arrived  from  the  queen  forbidding  his  de 
parture.  The  loyal  gentleman  bowed  and  obeyed. 

But  two  months  after  his  fleet  sailed,  on  the  7th 
of  November,  1585  (about  the  time  that  William 
Shakespeare  first  came  to  London),  Elizabeth  ap 
pointed  Sidney  governor  of  Flushing,  in  the 
Netherlands.  He  went  thither  gladly  on  the  18th, 
with  three  thousand  men,  to  strike  for  the  cause 
in  which  he  believed.  He  had  already  told  the 
queen  that  the  spirit  of  the  Netherlands  was  the 
spirit  of  God,  and  was  invincible.  His  uncle,  the 
Earl  of  Leicester,  followed  him  as  Commander-in- 
chief.  The  earl  was  handsome  at  tournaments, 
but  not  fit  for  battle-fields,  and  Sidney  was  an 
noyed  by  his  uncle's  conduct ;  but  he  writes  to  his 
father-in-law,  "Walsingham,  in  a  strain  full  of  the 
music  of  a  noble  soul,  and  fitly  precluding  his 
end :  "  I  think  a  wise  and  constant  man  ought 
never  to  grieve  while  he  doth  play,  as  a  man 
may  say,  his  own  part  truly." 

For  that  he  was  always  ready.     In  the  misty 


172  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

dawn  of  the  22d  of  September,  1586,  a  force  of 
three  thousand  Spaniards  stole  silently  along  to 
the  relief  of  Zutphen,  on  the  river  Isel.  Sidney,  at 
the  head  of  five  hundred  cavalry,  rode  forward  to 
meet  them.  In  the  obscurity  the  battle  was  sharp 
and  confused.  Seeing  his  friend  Lord  Willonghby 
in  special  danger,  Sidney  spurred  to  the  rescue. 
His  horse  was  shot  under  him  and  fell.  Spring 
ing  upon  another,  he  dashed  forward  again  and 
succored  his  friend,  but  at  the  instant  a  shot  struck 
him  below  the  knee,  glancing  upward.  His  furi 
ous  horse  became  unmanageable,  and  Sir  Philip 
was  obliged  to  leave  the  field.  But  as  he  passed 
slowly  along  to  the  rear  of  the  soldiers,  he  felt 
faint  with  bleeding,  and  called  for  water.  A  cup 
was  brought  to  him,  but  as  he  was  lifting  it  to 
bis  mouth  he  saw  a  dying  soldier  staring  at  it  with 
burning  eyes.  Philip  Sidney  paused  before  tasting 
it,  leaned  from  the  saddle,  and  handed  it  to  the  sol 
dier,  saying  to  him  in  the  same  soft,  musical  voice 
with  which  the  boy  called  to  his  mother  in  the 
sunny  garden  at  Penshurst, "  Friend,  thy  necessity 
is  yet  greater  than  mine." 

He  was  borne  on  to  Araheim,  and  lived  in  suf 
fering  for  twenty-six  days.  He  conversed  pleas 
antly  and  called  for  music,  and  said  at  last  to  his 
brother,  whom  he  had  loved  as  brothers  seldom 
love:  "Love  my  memory;  cherish  my  friends. 


SIR  PHILIP  SIDNEY  173 

Their  faith  to  me  may  assure  you  they  are  honest. 
But,  above  all,  govern  your  will  and  affections  by 
the  will  and  word  of  your  Creator,  in  me  behold 
ing  the  end  of  this  world  with  all  her  vanities." 
"And  so,"  says  old  Stowe,  with  fond  particularity, 
"  he  died,  the  17th  day  of  October,  between  two 
and  three  of  the  clock  in  the  afternoon." 


"  The  boast  of  heraldry,  the  pomp  of  power, 

And  all  that  beauty,  all  that  wealth  e'er  gave, 
Await  alike  the  inevitable  hour. 
The  paths  of  glory  lead  but  to  the  grave." 


This  is  the  story  of  Philip  Sidney.  A  letter,  a 
book,  a  battle.  How  little  to  justify  his  unique 
fame  !  How  invisible  his  performance  among  the 
illustrious  events  of  his  prodigious  age !  Yet  is 
not  the  instinct  of  the  human  heart  true ;  and  in 
the  stately  society  of  his  time,  if  Bacon  were  the 
philosopher,  Shakespeare  the  poet,  Burleigh  the 
counsellor,  Raleigh  the  soldier,  Drake  the  sailor, 
Hooker  the  theologian,  Essex  the  courtier,  and 
Greshara  the  merchant,  was  not  Philip  Sidney  as 
distinctively  the  gentleman  ?  Heroes  stood  beside 
him  in  clusters,  poets  in  constellations ;  all  the 
illustrious  men  of  the  age  achieved  more  tangible 
results  than  he,  yet  none  of  them  has  carved  his 
name  upon  history  more  permanently  and  with 
a  more  diamond  point;  for  he  had  that  happy 


174  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

harmony  of  mind  and  temper,  of  enthusiasm  and 
good  sense,  of  accomplishment  and  capacity,  which 
is  described  by  that  most  exquisite  and  most  abused 
word,  gentleman.  His  guitar  hung  by  a  ribbon  at 
his  side,  but  his  sword  hung  upon  leather  beneath 
it.  His  knee  bent  gallantly  to  the  queen,  but  it 
knelt  reverently  also  to  his  Maker.  And  it  was 
the  crown  of  the  gentleman  that  he  was  neither 
ashamed  of  the  guitar  nor  of  the  sword ;  neither 
of  the  loyalty  nor  the  prayer.  For  a  gentleman  is 
not  an  idler,  a  trifler,  a  dandy ;  he  is  not  a  scholar 
only,  a  soldier,  a  mechanic,  a  merchant;  he  is  the 
flower  of  men,  in  whom  the  accomplishment  of 
the  scholar,  the  bravery  of  the  soldier,  the  skill  of 
the  mechanic,  the  sagacity  of  the  merchant,  all 
have  their  part  and  appreciation.  A  sense  of  duty 
is  his  main-spring,  and  like  a  watch  crusted  with 
precious  stones,  his  function  is  not  to  look  prettily, 
but  to  tell  the  time  of  day.  Philip  Sidney  was 
not  a  gentleman  because  his  grandfather  was  the 
Duke  of  Northumberland  and  his  father  lord- 
deputy  of  Ireland,  but  because  he  was  himself 
generous,  simple,  truthful,  noble,  refined.  He  was 
born  with  a  gold  spoon  in  his  mouth,  but  the  gold 
is  only  the  test.  In  the  mouths  of  the  base  it  be 
comes  brass  and  iron.  George  IY.,  called  with 
bitter  irony  the  first  gentleman  in  Europe,  was 
born  with  the  gold  spoon,  but  his  acrid  humors 


SIR  PHILIP  KIDNEY  175 

turned  it  to  the  basest  metal,  betraying  his  mean 
soul.  George  Stephenson  was  born  with  the  pew 
ter  spoon  in  his  mouth,  but  the  true  temper  of 
his  soul  turned  it  into  pure  gold.  The  test  of  a 
gentleman  is  his  use,  not  his  uselessness;  whether 
that  use  be  direct  or  indirect,  whether  it  be  actual 
service  or  only  inspiring  and  aiding  action.  "  To 
what  purpose  should  our  thoughts  be  directed  to 
various  kinds  of  knowledge,"  wrote  Philip  Sidney 
in  1578,  "  unless  room  be  afforded  for  putting  it 
into  practice  so  that  public  advantage  may  be  the 
result  ?"  And  Algernon  Sidney  said,  nearly  a  cen 
tury  later :  "  I  have  ever  had  it  in  my  mind  that 
when  God  cast  me  into  such  a  condition  as  that  I 
cannot  save  my  life  but  by  doing  an  indecent  thing, 
he  shows  me  the  time  has  come  wherein  I  should 
resign  it."  And  when  that  time  came  he  did  re 
sign  it;  for  every  gentleman  instinctively  serves 
justice  and  liberty.  He  feels  himself  personally 
disgraced  by  an  insult  to  humanity,  for  he,  too,  is 
only  a  man  ;  and  however  stately  his  house  may  be 
and  murmurous  with  music,  however  glowing  with 
pictures  and  graceful  with  statues  and  reverend 
with  books — however  his  horses  may  out-trot  other 
horses,  and  his  yachts  outsail  all  yachts — the  gen 
tleman  is  king  and  master  of  these  and  not  their 
servant;  he  wears  them  for  ornament,  like  the  ring 
upon  his  finger  or  the  flower  in  his  button-hole, 


176  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

and  if  they  go  the  gentleman  remains.  He  knows 
that  all  their  worth  came  from  human  genius  and 
human  training;  and  loving  man  more  than  the 
works  of  man,  he  instinctively  shuns  whatever  in 
the  shape  of  man  is  degraded,  outraged,  and  for 
saken.  He  does  not  make  the  poverty  of  others 
the  reason  for  robbing  them ;  he  does  not  make 
the  oppression  of  others  the  reason  for  oppressing 
them,  for  his  gentility  is  his  religion ;  and  there 
fore  with  simple  truth  and  tender  audacity  the  old 
English  dramatist  Dekkar  calls  Him  who  gave  the 
name  to  our  religion,  and  who  destroyed  the  plea 
that  might  makes  right,  "  the  first  true  gentleman 
that  ever  breathed." 

But  not  only  is  Philip  Sidney's  story  the  poem 
of  a  gentleman,  it  is  that  of  a  young  man.  It  was 
the  age  of  young  men.  No  man  was  thought  flip 
pant,  whatever  his  years,  who  could  say  a  good 
thing  well,  or  do  a  brave  thing  successfully,  or 
give  the  right  advice  at  the  right  moment.  The 
great  men  of  the  day  were  all  young.  At  sixteen 
Bacon  had  already  sketched  his  Philosophy.  At 
seventeen  Walter  Raleigh  had  gone  to  find  some 
good  wars.  At  seventeen  Edmund  Spenser  had 
first  published.  Before  he  was  twenty,  Alexander 
Farnese,  Prince  of  Parma,  and  the  greatest  general 
of  Sidney's  time,  had  revealed  his  masterly  genius. 
At  twenty -one  Don  John  of  Austria  had  been 


SIR  PHILIP  SIDNEY  177 

commander -in -chief  against  the  Moors.  The 
Prince  of  Conde'  and  Henry  of  Navarre  were 
leaders  while  they  were  yet  boys.  At  twenty 
Francis  Drake  sailed,  a  captain,  with  John  Haw 
kins;  and  at  twenty-one  the  Washington  of  Eu 
ropean  history,  to  whom  an  American  has  for  the 
first  time  paid  just  homage  with  an  enthusiasm 
and  eloquence  of  Sidney  describing  his  friend — at 
twenty -one  William  of  Orange  commanded  ail 
army  of  Charles  Y. 

When  England  wanted  leaders  in  those  tremen 
dous  days  that  shaped  her  destiny,  it  did  just  what 
America  did  in  those  recent  perilous  hours  that 
determined  hers — she  sent  young  men  with  faith 
in  their  hearts  and  fire  in  their  veins — not  old  men 
with  feathers  in  their  hats ;  and  everywhere  it  is 
the  young  men  who  have  made  history.  At  thirty- 
two  Alexander  wept  for  another  world  to  conquer. 
On  his  thirty-seventh  birthday  Raphael  lay  dead 
beneath  his  last  picture.  At  thirty-six  Mozart  had 
sung  his  swan-song.  At  twenty-five  Hannibal  was 
cornmander-in-chief  of  the  Carthaginian  armies. 
At  thirty-three  Turenne  was  marshal  of  France. 
At  twenty- seven  Bonaparte  was  triumphant  in 
Italy.  At  forty-five  Wellington  had  conquered 
Bonaparte,  and  at  forty -eight  retired  from  active 
military  service.  At  forty-three  Washington  was 

chief  of  the  Continental  army.     On  his  forty-fifth 
12 


178  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

birthday  Sherman  was  piercing  the  heart  of  the 
American  Rebellion  ;  and  before  he  was  forty- 
three  Grant  had  "  fought  it  out  on  this  line  "  to 
perfect  victory.  Young  men  !  Of  course  they 
were  young  men.  Youth  is  the  main-spring  of 
the  world.  The  experience  of  age  is  wise  in  ac 
tion  only  when  it  is  electrified  by  the  enthusiasm 
of  youth.  Show  me  a  land  in  which  the  young 
men  are  cold  and  sceptical  and  prematurely  wise ; 
which  in  polite  indifference  is  called  political  wis 
dom,  contempt  for  ideas  common-sense,  and  hon 
esty  in  politics  Sunday-school  statesmanship — show 
me  a  land  in  which  the  young  men  are  more  anx 
ious  about  doing  well  than  about  doing  right — and 
I  will  show  you  a  country  in  which  public  cor 
ruption  and  ruin  overtakes  private  infidelity  and 
cowardice,  and  in  which,  if  there  were  originally 
a  hope  for  mankind,  a  faith  in  principle,  and  a 
conquering  enthusiasm,  that  faith,  hope,  and  en 
thusiasm  are  expiring  like  the  deserted  camp-fires 
of  a  retiring  army.  Woe  to  a  man  when  his  heart 
grows  old  !  Woe  to  a  nation  when  its  young  men 
shuffle  in  the  gouty  shoes  and  limp  on  the  untime 
ly  crutches  of  age,  instead  of  leaping  along  the 
course  of  life  with  the  jubilant  spring  of  their 
years  and  the  sturdy  play  of  their  own  muscles ! 
Sir  Philip  Sidney's  was  the  age  of  young  men : 
and  wherever  there  are  self-reliance,  universal  hu- 


SIR  PHILIP  SIDNEY  179 

man  sympathy,  and  confidence  in  God,  there  is  the 
age  of  youth  and  national  triumph ;  just  as  when 
ever  Joan  of  Arc  leads  the  army,  or  Molly  Stark 
dares  to  be  a  widow,  or  Rosa  Bonheur  paints,  or 
Hattie  Hosmer  carves,  or  Jenny  Lind  sings,  or 
Mrs.  Patten  steers  the  wrecked  ship  to  port,  or  Flor 
ence  Kightingale  walks  the  midnight  hospital — 
these  are  the  age  and  the  sphere  of  woman.  Queen 
Elizabeth's  was  the  age  of  young  men  ;  but  so  it  is 
always  when  there  are  young  men  who  can  make 
an  age. 

And  ours  is  such  an  age.  "We  live  in  a  country 
which  has  been  saved  by  its  young  men.  Before 
us  opens  a  future  which  is  to  be  secured  by  the 
young  men.  I  have  not  held  up  Sir  Philip  Sidney 
as  a  reproach,  but  only  for  his  brothers  to  admire 
— only  that  we  may  scatter  the  glamour  of  the  past 
and  of  history,  and  understand  that  we  do  not  live 
in  the  lees  of  time  and  the  world's  decrepitude. 
There  is  no  country  so  fair  that  ours  is  not  fairer ; 
there  is  no  age  so  heroic  that  ours  is  not  as  noble ; 
there  is  no  youth  in  history  so  romantic  and  be 
loved  that  in  a  thousand  American  homes  you 
may  not  find  his  peer  to-day.  It  is  the  Sidneys 
we  have  known  who  interpret  this  Philip  of  three 
hundred  years  ago.  Dear,  noble  gentleman  !  he 
does  not  move  alone  in  our  imaginations,  for  our 
own  memories  supply  his  splendid  society.  "We 


180  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

too  have  seen,  how  often  and  how  often,  the  bitter 
fight  of  the  misty  morning  on  the  Isel — the  ring 
ing  charge,  the  fatal  fall.  A  thousand  times  we 
saw  the  same  true  Sidney  heart  that,  dying,  gave 
the  cup  of  cold  water  to  a  fellow-soldier.  And  we, 
for  whom  the  Sidneys  died,  let  us  thank  God  for 
showing  us  in  our  own  experience,  as  in  history, 
that  the  noblest  traits  of  human  character  are  still 
spanned  by  the  rainbow  of  perfect  beauty;  and 
that  human  love  and  faith  and  fidelity,  like  day 
and  night,  like  seed-time  and  harvest,  shall  never, 
never  fail. 


LONGFELLOW 


LOXGFELLOW 

IN  the  school  readers  of  half  a  century  ago  there 
were  two  poems  which  every  boy  and  girl  read 
and  declaimed  and  remembered.  How  much  of 
that  old  literature  has  disappeared  !  How  much 
that  stirred  the  hearts  and  touched  the  fancies  of 
those  boys  and  girls,  their  children  have  never 
heard  of!  Willis's  "Saturday  Afternoon"  and 
" Burial  of  Arnold"  have  floated  away,  almost  out 
of  sight,  with  Pierpont's  "Bunker  Hill"  and 
Sprague's  Fourth-of-July  oration.  The  relentless 
winds  of  oblivion  incessantly  blow.  Scraps  of 
verse  and  rhetoric  once  so  familiar  are  caught  up, 
wafted  noiselessly  away,  and  lodged  in  neglected 
books  and  in  the  dark  corners  of  fading  memories, 
gradually  vanish  from  familiar  knowledge.  But 
the  two  little  poems  of  which  we  speak  have  sur 
vived.  One  of  them  was  Bryant's  "  March,"  and  the 
other  was  Longfellow's  "  April,"  and  the  names  of 
the  two  poets  singing  of  spring  were  thus  associat 
ed  in  the  spring-time  of  our  poetry,  as  the  fathers 
of  which  they  will  be  always  honored. 


184  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

Both  poems  originally  appeared  in  the  United 
States  Literary  Gazette,  and  were  included  in  the 
modest  volume  of  selections  from  that  journal 
which  was  published  in  Boston  in  1826.  The 
chief  names  in  this  little  book  are  those  of  Bryant, 
Longfellow,  Percival,  Mellen,  Dawes,  and  Jones. 
Percival  has  already  become  a  name  only  ;  Dawes, 
and  Greenville  Mellen,  who,  like  Longfellow,  was 
a  son  of  Maine,  are  hardly  known  to  this  genera 
tion,  and  Jones  does  not  even  appear  in  Duyc- 
kinck's  Cyclopaedia.  But  in  turning  over  the 
pages  it  is  evident  that  Time  has  dealt  justly  with 
the  youthful  bards,  and  that  the  laurel  rests  upon 
the  heads  of  the  singers  whose  earliest  strains  fitly 
preluded  the  music  of  their  prime.  Longfellow 
was  nineteen  years  old  when  the  book  was  pub 
lished.  He  had  graduated  at  Bowdoin  College  the 
year  before,  and  the  verses  had  been  written  and 
printed  in  the  Gazette  while  he  was  still  a  student. 

The  glimpses  of  the  boy  that  we  catch  through 
the  recollections  of  his  old  professor,  Packard,  and 
of  his  college  mates,  are  of  the  same  character  as  at 
every  period  of  his  life.  They  reveal  a  modest, 
refined,  manly  youth,  devoted  to  study,  of  great 
personal  charm  and  gentle  manners.  It  is  the  boy 
that  the  older  man  suggested.  To  look  back  upon 
him  is  to  trace  the  broad  and  clear  and  beautiful 
river  far  up  the  green  meadows  to  the  limpid  rill. 


LONGFELLOW  185 

His  poetic  taste  and  faculty  were  already  apparent, 
and  it  is  related  that  a  version  of  an  ode  of  Horace 
which  he  wrote  in  his  Sophomore  year  so  im 
pressed  one  of  the  members  of  the  examining 
board  that  when  afterwards  a  chair  of  modern  lan 
guages  was  established  in  the  college,  he  proposed 
as  its  incumbent  the  young  Sophomore  whose  flu 
ent  verse  he  remembered.  The  impression  made 
by  the  young  Longfellow  is  doubtlessly  accurately 
described  by  one  of  his  famous  classmates,  Haw 
thorne,  for  the  class  of  '25  is  a  proud  tradition  of 
Bowdoin.  In  "P.'s  Correspondence,"  one  of  the 
Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse,  a  quaint  fancy  of  a 
letter  from  "my  unfortunate  friend  P.,"  whose 
wits  were  a  little  disordered,  there  are  grotesque 
hints  of  the  fate  of  famous  persons.  P.  talks  with 
Burns  at  eighty-seven  ;  Byron,  grown  old  and  fat, 
wears  a  wig  and  spectacles ;  Shelley  is  reconciled 
to  the  Church  of  England;  Coleridge  finishes 
"  Christabel  ;"  Keats  writes  a  religious  epic  on  the 
millennium ;  and  George  Canning  is  a  peer.  On 
our  side  of  the  sea,  Dr.  Channing  had  just  pub 
lished  a  volume  of  verses;  Whittier  had  been 
lynched  ten  years  before  in  South  Carolina ;  and, 
continues  P.,  "  I  remember,  too,  a  lad  just  from 
college,  Longfellow  by  name,  who  scattered  some 
delicate  verses  to  the  winds,  and  went  to  Germany, 
and  perished,  I  think,  of  intense  application,  at  the 


186  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

University  of  Gottingen."  Longfellow,  in  turn, 
recalled  his  classmate  Hawthorne  —  a  shy,  dark- 
haired  youth  flitting  across  the  college  grounds  in 
a  coat  with  bright  buttons. 

Among  these  delicate  verses  was  the  poem  to 
"  An  April  Day."  As  the  work  of  a  very  young 
man  it  is  singularly  restrained  and  finished.  It  has 
the  characteristic  elegance  and  flowing  melody  of 
his  later  verse,  and  its  half-pensive  tone  is  not  ex 
cessive  nor  immature.  It  is  not,  however,  for  this 
that  it  is  most  interesting,  but  because,  with  Bry 
ant's  "  March,"  it  is  the  fresh  and  simple  note  of  a 
truly  American  strain.  Perhaps  the  curious  read 
er,  enlightened  by  the  observation  of  subsequent 
years,  may  find  in  the  "  March  "  a  more  vigorous 
love  of  nature,  and  in  the  "  April "  a  tenderer  tone 
of  tranquil  sentiment.  But  neither  of  the  poems 
is  the  echo  of  a  foreign  music,  nor  an  exercise  of 
remembered  reading.  They  both  deal  with  the 
sights  and  sounds  and  suggestions  of  the  American 
landscape  in  the  early  spring.  In  Longfellow's 
"  April "  there  are  none  of  the  bishops'  caps  and 
foreign  ornament  of  illustration  to  which  Margaret 
Fuller  afterwards  objected  in  his  verse.  But  these 
early  associated  poems,  both  of  the  younger  and 
of  the  older  singer,  show  an  original  movement  of 
American  literary  genius,  and,  like  the  months 
which  they  celebrate,  they  foretold  a  summer. 


LONGFELLOW  187 

That  summer  had  been  long  awaited.  In  1809, 
Buckminster  said  in  his  Phi  Beta  Kappa  oration  at 
Harvard  College:  "  Our  poets  and  historians,  our 
critics  and  orators,  the  men  of  whom  posterity  are 
to  stand  in  awe,  and  by  whom  they  are  to  be  in 
structed,  are  yet  to  appear  among  us."  Happily, 
however,  the  orator  thought  that  he  beheld  the 
promise  of  their  coming,  although  he  does  not  say 
where.  But  even  as  he  spoke  they  were  at  hand. 
Irving's  Knickerbocker  was  published  in  1809,  and 
Bryant's  "  Thanatopsis  "  was  written  in  1812.  The 
North  American  Review,  an  enterprise  of  literary 
men  in  Boston  and  Cambridge,  was  begun  in  1815, 
and  Bryant  and  Longfellow  were  both  contribu 
tors.  But  it  was  in  the  year  1821,  the  year  in 
which  Longfellow  entered  college,  that  the  begin 
ning  of  a  distinctive  American  literature  became 
most  evident.  There  were  signs  of  an  indepen 
dent  intellectual  movement  both  in  the  choice  of 
subjects  and  in  the  character  of  treatment.  This 
was  the  year  of  the  publication  of  Bryant's  first 
slim  volume,  and  of  Cooper's  Spy,  and  of  Dana's 
Idle  Man.  Irving's  Sketch  Book  was  already  fin 
ished,  Miss  Seclgwick's  Hope  Leslie  and  Percival's 
first  volume  had  been  issued,  and  Halleck's  and 
Drake's  "  Croakers "  were  already  popular.  In 
these  works,  as  in  all  others  of  that  time,  there 
was  indeed  no  evidence  of  great  creative  genius. 


188  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

The  poet  and  historian  whom  Buckminster  fore 
saw,  and  who  were  to  strike  posterity  with  awe, 
had  not  yet  appeared,  but  in  the  same  year  the 
voice  of  the  orator  whom  he  anticipated  was  heard 
upon  Plymouth  Hock  in  cadences  massive  and  so 
norous  as  the  voice  of  the  sea.  In  the  year  1821 
there  was  the  plain  evidence  of  an  awakening  orig 
inal  literary  activity. 

Longfellow  was  the  youngest  of  the  group  in 
which  he  first  appeared.  His  work  was  graceful, 
tender,  pensive,  gentle,  melodious,  the  strain  of  a 
troubadour.  When  he  went  to  Europe  in  1826 
to  fit  himself  more  fully  for  his  professorship, 
he  had  but  "  scattered  some  delicate  verses  to  the 
winds."  When  he  returned,  and  published  in  1833 
his  translations  of  U0oplas  de  Manrique"  and 
other  Spanish  poems,  he  had  apparently  done  no 
more.  There  was  plainly  shown  an  exquisite  lit 
erary  artist,  a  very  Benvenuto  of  grace  and  skill. 
But  he  would  hardly  have  been  selected  as  the 
poet  who  was  to  take  the  strongest  hold  of 
the  hearts  of  his  countrymen,  the  singer  whose 
sweet  and  hallowing  spell  was  to  be  so  deep 
and  universal  that  at  last  it  would  be  said  in  an 
other  country  that  to  it  also  his  death  was  a  na 
tional  loss. 

The  qualities  of  these  early  verses,  however, 
were  never  lost.  The  genius  of  the  poet  steadily 


LONGFELLOW  189 

and  beautifully  developed,  flowering  according  to 
its  nature.  The  most  urbane  and  sympathetic  of 
men,  never  aggressive,  nor  vehement,  nor  self- 
asserting,  he  was  yet  thoroughly  independent,  and 
the  individuality  of  his  genius  held  its  tranquil 
way  as  surely  as  the  river  Charles,  whose  placid 
beauty  he  so  often  sang,  wound  through  the  mead 
ows  calm  and  free.  When  Longfellow  came  to 
Cambridge,  the  impulse  of  Transcendentalism  in 
lN"ew  England  was  deeply  affecting  scholarship  and 
literature.  It  was  represented  by  the  most  origi 
nal  of  American  thinkers  and  the  typical  Ameri 
can  scholar,  Emerson,  and  its  elevating,  purifying, 
and  emancipating  influences  are  memorable  in  our 
moral  and  intellectual  history.  Longfellow  lived 
in  the  very  heart  of  the  movement.  Its  leaders 
were  his  cherished  friends.  He  too  was  a  scholar 
and  a  devoted  student  of  German  literature,  who 
had  drunk  deeply  also  of  the  romance  of  German 
life.  Indeed,  his  first  important  works  stimulated 
the  taste  for  German  studies  and  the  enjoyment  of 
its  literature  more  than  any  other  impulse  in  this 
country.  But  he  remained  without  the  charmed 
Transcendental  circle,  serene  and  friendly  and  at 
tentive.  There  are  those  whose  career  was  wholly 
moulded  by  the  intellectual  revival  of  that  time. 
But  Longfellow  was  untouched  by  it,  except  as  his 
sympathies  were  attracted  by  the  vigor  and  purity 


190  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

of  its  influence.  His  tastes,  his  interests,  his  activ 
ities,  his  career,  would  have  been  the  same  had  that 
great  light  never  shone.  If  he  had  been  the  duc 
tile,  echoing,  imitative  nature  that  the  more  ardent 
disciples  of  the  faith  supposed  him  to  be,  he  would 
have  been  absorbed  and  swept  away  by  the  flood. 
But  he  was  as  untouched  by  it  as  Charles  Lamb  by 
the  wars  of  Napoleon. 

It  was  in  the  first  flush  of  the  Transcendental 
epoch  that  Longfellow's  first  important  works  ap 
peared.  In  1839,  his  prose  romance  of  Hyperion 
was  published,  following  the  sketches  of  travel 
called  Outre-Mer.  He  was  living  in  Cambridge, 
in  the  famous  house  in  which  he  died,  and  in  which 
Hyperion  and  all  of  his  familiar  books  were  writ 
ten.  Under  the  form  of  a  slight  love  tale,  Hy 
perion  is  the  diary  of  a  poet's  wandering  in  a 
storied  and  picturesque  land,  the  hearty,  home-like 
genius  of  whose  life  and  literature  is  peculiarly 
akin  to  his  own.  The  book  bubbles  and  sings 
with  snatches  of  the  songs  of  the  country;  it 
reproduces  the  tone  and  feeling  of  the  land 
scape,  the  grandeur  of  Switzerland,  the  rich  ro 
mance  of  the  Rhine;  it  decorates  itself  with  a 
quaint  scholarship,  and  is  so  steeped  in  the  spirit 
of  the  country,  so  glowing  with  the  palpitating 
tenderness  of  passion,  that  it  is  still  eagerly  bought 
at  the  chief  points  which  it  commemorates,  and  is 


LOXGFELLOW  191 

cherished  by  young  hearts  as  no  prose  romance 
was  ever  cherished  before. 

Hyperion,  indeed,  is  a  poet's  and  lover's  ro 
mance.  It  is  full  of  deep  feeling,  of  that  intense 
and  delighted  appreciation  of  nature  in  her  grander 
forms,  and  of  scenes  consecrated  bj  poetic  tradi 
tion,  which  belongs  to  a  singularly  fine,  sensitive, 
and  receptive  nature,  when  exalted  by  pure  and 
lofty  affection  ;  and  it  has  the  fulness  and  swing 
of  youth,  saddened  by  experience  indeed,  yet  ris 
ing  with  renewed  hope,  like  a  field  of  springing 
grain  in  May  bowed  by  the  west  wind,  and 
touched  with  the  shadow  of  a  cloud,  but  presently 
lifting  itself  again  to  heaven.  A  clear  sweet  hu 
mor  and  blitheness  of  heart  blend  in  this  romance. 
"What  is  called  its  artificial  tone  is  not  insincerity ; 
it  is  the  play  of  an  artist  conscious  of  his  skill  and 
revelling  in  it,  even  while  his  hand  and  his  heart 

O  ' 

are  deeply  in  earnest.  Werther  is  a  romance,  Dis 
raeli's  Wondrous  Tale  of  Alroy  is  a  romance,  but 
they  belong  to  the  realm  of  Beverley  and  Julia  in 
Sheridan's  JRivals.  In  Hyperion,  with  all  its  elab 
orate  picturesqueness,  its  spicy  literary  atmosphere, 
and  imaginative  outline,  there  is  a  breezy  fresh 
ness  and  simplicity  and  healthiness  of  feeling 
which  leaves  it  still  unique. 

In  the  same  year  with  Hyperion  came  the 
Voices  of  the  Night,  a  volume  of  poems  which 


192  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

contained  the  "  Coplas  de  Manrique "  and  the 
translations,  with  a  selection  from  the  verses  of  the 
Literary  Gazette,  which  the  author  playfully  re 
claims  in  a  note  from  their  vagabond  and  precari 
ous  existence  in  the  corners  of  newspapers — gath 
ering  his  children  from  wanderings  in  lanes  and 
alleys,  and  introducing  them  decorously  to  the 
world.  A  few  later  poems  were  added,  and  these, 
with  the  Hyperion,  showed  a  new  and  distinctive 
literary  talent.  In  both  of  these  volumes  there  is 
the  purity  of  spirit,  the  elegance  of  form,  the  ro 
mantic  tone,  the  airy  grace,  which  were  already 
associated  with  Longfellow's  name.  But  there  are 
other  qualities.  The  boy  of  nineteen,  the  poet  of 
Bowdoin,  has  become  a  scholar  and  a  traveller. 
The  teeming  hours,  the  ample  opportunities  of 
youth,  have  not  been  neglected  or  squandered, 
but,  like  a  golden-banded  bee,  humming  as  he 
sails,  the  young  poet  has  drained  all  the  flowers  of 
literature  of  their  nectar,  and  has  built  for  himself 
a  hive  of  sweetness.  More  than  this,  he  had 
proved  in  his  own  experience  the  truth  of  Irving's 
tender  remark,  that  an  early  sorrow  is  often  the 
truest  benediction  for  the  poet. 

Through  all  the  romantic  grace  and  elegance  of 
the  Voices  of  the  Night  and  Hyperion,  however, 
there  is  a  moral  earnestness  which  is  even  more  re 
markable  in  the  poems  than  in  the  romance.  JS"o 


volume  of  poems  ever  published  in  the  country  was 
so  popular.  Severe  critics  indeed, while  acknowledg 
ing  its  melody  and  charm,  thought  it  too  morally 
didactic,  the  work  of  a  student  too  fondly  enam 
oured  of  foreign  literatures.  But  while  they  con 
ceded  taste  and  facility,  two  of  the  poems  at  least 
—the  "Psalm  of  Life"  and  the  "  Footsteps  of  An 
gels  " — penetrated  the  common  heart  at  once,  and 
have  held  it  ever  since.  A  young  Scotchman  saw 
them  reprinted  in  some  paper  or  magazine,  and, 
meeting  a  literary  lady  in  London,  repeated  them 
to  her,  and  then  to  a  literary  assembly  at  her 
house  ;  and  the  presence  of  a  new  poet  was  at  once 
acknowledged.  If  the  "  Midnight  Mass  for  the 
Dying  Year "  in  its  form  and  phrase  and  concep 
tion  recalled  a  land  of  cathedrals  and  a  historic  re 
ligious  ritual,  and  had  but  a  vague  and  remote 
charm  for  the  woodman  in  the  pine  forests  of 
Maine  and  the  farmer  on  the  Illinois  prairie,  yet 
the  "  Psalm  of  Life "  was  the  very  heart-beat  of 
the  American  conscience,  and  the  "  Footsteps  of 
Angels  "  was  a  hymn  of  the  fond  yearning  of  ev 
ery  loving  heart. 

During  the  period  of  more  than  forty  years 
from  the  publication  of  the  Voices  of  the  Night  to 
his  death,  the  fame  of  Longfellow  constantly  in 
creased.  It  was  not  because  his  genius,  like  that 
of  another  scholarly  poet,  Gray,  seldom  blossomed 


13 


194  LITER AEY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

in  song,  so  that  his  renown  rested  upon  a  few  gem- 
like  verses.  He  was  not  intimidated  by  his  own 
fame.  During  those  forty  years  he  wrote  and 
published  constantly.  Other  great  fames  arose 
around  him.  New  poets  began  to  sing.  Popular 
historians  took  their  places.  But  still  with  Bryant 
the  name  of  Longfellow  was  always  associated  at 
the  head  of  American  singers,  and  far  beyond 
that  of  any  other  American  author  was  his  name 
known  through  all  the  reading  world.  The  vol 
ume  of  Voices  of  the  Night  was  followed  by  simi 
lar  collections,  then  by  The  Spanish  Student, 
Eoangeline,  The  Golden  Legend,  Hiawatha,  The 
Courtship  of  Miles  Standish,  The  Tales  of  a  Way 
side  Inn,  The  New  England  Tragedies,  The 
Masque  of  Pandora,  The  Hanging  of  the  Crane, 
the  Morituri  Salutamus,  the  Keramos.  But  all 
of  these,  like  stately  birds 

"  Sailing  with  supreme  dominion 
Through  the  upper  realms  of  air," 

were  attended  by  shorter  poems,  sonnets,  "birds 
of  passage,"  as  the  poet  called  his  swallow  flights 
of  song.  In  all  these  larger  poems,  while  the 
characteristics  of  the  earlier  volumes  were  more 
amply  developed  and  illustrated,  and  the  subtle 
beauty  of  the  skill  became  even  more  exquisite, 


LOXGFELLOW  195 

tlie  essential  qualities  of  the  work  remain  un 
changed,  and  the  charm  of  a  poet  and  his  signifi 
cance  in  the  literature  and  development  of  his 
country  were  never  more  readily  defined. 

Child  of  New  England,  and  trained  by  her  best 
influences ;  of  a  temperament  singularly  sweet  and 
serene,  and  with  the  sturdy  rectitude  of  his  race  ; 
refined  and  softened  by  wide  contact  with  other 
lands  and  many  men ;  born  in  prosperity,  accom 
plished  in  all  literatures,  and  himself  a  literary 
artist  of  consummate  elegance,  he  was  the  fine 
flower  of  the  Puritan  stock  under  its  changed  mod 
ern  conditions.  Out  of  strength  had  come  forth 
sweetness.  The  grim  iconoclast,  "humming  a 
surly  hymn,"  had  issued  in  the  Christian  gentle 
man.  Captain  Miles  Standish  had  risen  into  Sir 
Philip  Sidney.  The  austere  morality  that  relent 
lessly  ruled  the  elder  New  England  reappeared  in 
the  genius  of  this  singer  in  the  most  gracious  and 
captivating  form.  The  grave  nature  of  Bryant  in 
his  early  secluded  life  among  the  solitary  hills  of 
Western  Massachusetts  had  been  tinged  by  them 
with  their  own  sobriety.  There  was  something  of 
the  sombre  forest,  of  the  gray  rocky  face  of  stern 
New  England  in  his  granitic  verse.  But  what  deli 
cate  wild -flowers  nodded  in  the  clefts!  What 
scent  of  the  pine-tree,  what  music  of  gurgling  wa 
ter,  filled  the  cool  air !  What  bird  high  poised 


196  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

upon  its  solitary  way  through  heaven-taught  faith 
to  him  who  pursued  his  way  alone ! 

But  while  the  same  moral  tone  in  the  poetry 
hoth  of  Bryant  and  of  Longfellow  shows  them  to 
be  children  of  the  same  soil  and  tradition,  and 
shows  also  that  they  saw  plainly,  what  poets  of  the 
greatest  genius  have  often  not  seen  at  all,  that 
in  the  morality  of  human  life  lies  its  true  beauty, 
the  different  aspect  of  Puritan  development  which 
they  displayed  was  due  to  difference  of  tempera 
ment  and  circumstance.  The  foundations  of  our 
distinctive  literature  were  largely  laid  in  New  Eng 
land,  and  they  rest  upon  morality.  Literary  New 
England  had  never  a  trace  of  literary  Bohemia. 
The  most  illustrious  group,  and  the  earliest,  of 
American  authors  and  scholars  and  literary  men, 
the  Boston  and  Cambridge  group  of  the  last  gen 
eration — Channing,  the  two  .Danas,  Sparks,  Ever 
ett,  Bancroft,  Ticknor,  Prescott,  Norton,  Ripley, 
Palfrey,  Emerson,  Parker,  Hawthorne,  Longfel 
low,  Holmes,  Whittier,  Agassiz,  Lowell,  Motley — 
have  been  all  sober  and  industrious  citizens  of 
whom  Judge  Sewall  would  have  approved.  Their 
lives  as  well  as  their  works  have  ennobled  litera 
ture.  They  have  illustrated  the  moral  sanity  of 
genius. 

Longfellow  shares  this  trait  with  them  all.  It  is 
the  moral  purity  of  his  verse  which  at  once  charms 


LONGFELLOW  197 

the  heart,  and  in  his  first  most  famous  poem,  the 
"Psalm  of  Life,"  it  is  the  direct  inculcation  of  a 
moral  purpose.  Those  who  insist  that  literary  art, 
like  all  other  art,  should  not  concern  itself  posi 
tively  with  morality,  must  reflect  that  the  heart  of 
this  age  has  been  touched  as  truly  by  Longfellow, 
however  differently,  as  that  of  any  time  by  its 
master-poet.  This,  indeed,  is  his  peculiar  dis 
tinction.  Among  the  great  poetic  names  of  the 
century  in  English  literature,  Burns,  in  a  general 
way,  is  the  poet  of  love ;  Wordsworth,  of  lofty 
contemplation  of  nature;  Byron,  of  passion;  Shel 
ley,  of  aspiration  ;  Keats,  of  romance ;  Scott,  of 
heroic  legend ;  and  not  less,  and  quite  as  distinc 
tively,  Longfellow,  of  the  domestic  affections.  He 
is  the  poet  of  the  household,  of  the  fireside,  of  the 
universal  home  feeling.  The  infinite  tenderness 
and  patience,  the  pathos,  and  the  beauty  of  daily 
life,  of  familiar  emotion,  and  the  common  scene, 
these  are  the  significance  of  that  verse  whose  beau 
tiful  and  simple  melody,  softly  murmuring  for 
more  than  forty  years,  made  the  singer  the  most 
widely  beloved  of  living  men. 

Longfellow's  genius  was  not  a  great  creative 
force.  It  burst  into  no  tempests  of  mighty  pas 
sion.  It  did  not  wrestle  with  the  haughtily  veiled 
problems  of  fate  and  free-will  absolute.  It  had  no 
dramatic  movement  and  variety,  no  eccentricity 


198  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

and  grotesqueness  and  unexpectedness.  It  was 
not  Lear,  nor  Faust,  nor  Manfred,  nor  Romeo.  A 
carnation  is  not  a  passion-flower.  Indeed,  no  poet 
of  so  universal  and  sincere  a  popularity  ever  sang 
so  little  of  love  as  a  passion.  None  of  his  smaller 
poems  are  love  poems ;  and  Evangeline  is  a  tale, 
not  of  fiery  romance,  but  of  affection  "  that  hopes 
and  endures  and  is  patient,"  of  the  unwasting 
"beauty  and  strength  of  woman's  devotion," of  the 
constantly  tried  and  tested  virtue  that  makes  up 
the  happiness  of  daily  life.  No  one  has  described 
so  well  as  Longfellow  himself  the  character  and  in 
fluence  of  his  own  poetry : 

"Come  read  to  me  some  poem, 

Some  simple  and  heart-felt  lay, 
That  shall  soothe  this  restless  feeling, 
And  banish  the  thoughts  of  day. 

"Not  from  the  grand  old  masters, 

Not  from  the  bards  sublime, 
Whose  distant  footsteps  echo 
Through  the  corridors  of  Time. 


"  Such  songs  have  power  to  quiet 

The  restless  pulse  of  care, 

And  come  like  the  benediction 

That  follows  after  prayer." 

This  was  the  office  of  Longfellow  in  literature, 
and  how  perfectly  it  was  fulfilled !     It  was  not 


LONGFELLOW  199 

a  wilful  purpose,  but  he  carefully  guarded  the 
fountain  of  his  song  from  contamination  or  diver 
sion,  and  this  was  its  natural  overflow.  During 
the  long  period  of  his  literary  activity  there  were 
many  "  schools  "  and  styles  and  fashions  of  poetry. 
The  influence  first  of  Byron,  then  of  Keats,  is 
manifest  in  the  poetry  of  the  last  generation,  and 
in  later  days  a  voluptuous  vagueness  and  barbaric 
splendor,  as  of  the  lower  empire  in  literature,  have 
corroded  the  vigor  of  much  modern  verse.  But 
no  perfumed  blandishment  of  doubtful  goddesses 
won  Longfellow  from  his  sweet  and  domestic 
Muse.  The  clear  thought,  the  true  feeling,  the 
pure  aspiration,  is  expressed  with  limpid  simplic 
ity: 

"Strong  without  rage;  without  o'erflo wing,  full." 

The  most  delightful  picture  in  Goldsmith's  life 
is  that  of  the  youth  wandering  through  rural 
Europe,  stopping  at  the  little  villages  in  the  peace 
ful  summer  sunset,  and  sweetly  playing  melodies 
upon  his  flute  for  the  lads  and  lasses  to  dance  upon 
the  green.  Who  that  reads  "The  Traveller"  and 
"  The  Deserted  Tillage "  does  not  hear  in  their 
pensive  music  the  far-away  fluting  of  that  kind- 
hearted  wanderer,  and  see  the  lovely  idyl  of  that 
simple  life  ?  So  sings  this  poet  to  the  young  men 
and  maidens  in  the  soft  summer  air.  They  follow 


200  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

his  measures  with  fascinated  hearts,  for  they  hear 
in  them  their  own  hearts  singing ;  they  catch  the 
music  of  their  dearest  hope,  of  their  best  endeav 
or;  they  hear  the  voices  of  the  peaceful  joy  that 
hallows  faithful  affection,  of  the  benediction  that 
belongs  to  self-sacrifice  and  devotion.  And  now 
that  the  singer  is  gone,  and  his  voice  is  silent, 
those  hushed  hearts  recall  the  words  of  Father 
Felicien,  Evangeline's  pastor : 


"Forty  years  of  my  life  have  I  labored  among  you,  and 

taught  you 
Not  in  word  alone,  but  in  deed,  to  love  one  another." 


It  is  this  fidelity  of  his  genius  to  itself,  the  uni 
versal  feeling  to  which  he  gives  expression,  and 
the  perfection  of  his  literary  workmanship,  which 
is  sure  to  give  Longfellow  a  permanent  place  in 
literature.  His  poems  are  apples  of  gold  in  pict 
ures  of  silver.  There  is  nothing  in  them  exces- 
Isive,  nothing  overwrought,  nothing  strained  into 
•turgidity,  obscurity,  and  nonsense.  There  is  some 
times,  indeed,  a  fine  stateliness,  as  in  the  "Arsenal 
at  Springfield,"  and  even  a  resounding  splendor  of 
diction,  as  in  "  Sandalphon."  But  when  the  mel 
ody  is  most  delicate  it  is  simple.  The  poet  throws 
nothing  into  the  mist  to  make  it  large.  How  pure 
ly  melodious  his  verse  can  be  without  losing  the 


LONGFELLOW  201 

thought  or  its  most  transparent  expression  is  seen 
in  "The  Evening  Star"  and  "  Snow- Flakes." 

The  literary  decoration  of  his  style,  the  aroma 
and  color  and  richness,  so  to  speak,  which  it  de 
rives  from  his  ample  accomplishment  in  literature, 
are  incomparable.  His  verse  is  embroidered  with 
allusions  and  names  and  illustrations  wrought  with 
a  taste  so  true  and  a  skill  so  rare  that  the  robe, 
though  it  be  cloth  of  gold,  is  as  finely  flexible  as 
linen,  and  still  beautifully  reveals,  not  conceals, 
the  living  form. 

This  scholarly  allusion  and  literary  tone  were  at 
one  time  criticised  as  showing  that  Longfellow's 
genius  was  really  an  exotic  grown  under  glass,  or 
a  smooth-throated  mocking-bird  warbling  a  foreign 
melody.  A  recent  admirable  paper  in  the  Even 
ing  Post  intimates  that  the  kindly  poet  took  the 
suggestion  in  good  part,  and  modified  his  strain. 
But  there  was  never  any  interruption  or  change  in 
the  continuity  of  his  work.  Evangelhie  and  Hia 
watha  and  The  Courtship  of  Miles  Standish  blos 
som  as  naturally  out  of  his  evident  and  character 
istic  taste  and  tendency  as  The  Golden  Legend  or 
the  Masque  of  Pandwa.  In  the  Tales  of  'a  Way 
side  Inn  the  "  Ride  of  Paul  Revere  "  is  as  natural 
a  play  of  his  power  as  "  King  Robert  of  Sicily." 
The  various  aspect  and  character  of  nature  upon 
the  American  continent  is  nowhere  so  fully,  beau- 


202  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

tifully,  and  accurately  portrayed  as  in  Evangeline. 
The  scenery  of  the  poem  is  the  vast  American 
landscape,  boundless  prairie  and  wooded  hill,  brim 
ming  river  and  green  valley,  sparkling  savanna 
and  broad  bayou,  city  and  village,  camp  and  wig 
wam,  peopled  with  the  children  of  many  races, 
and  all  the  blended  panorama  seen  in  the  magic 
light  of  imagination.  So,  too,  the  poetic  character 
of  the  Indian  legend  is  preserved  with  conscien 
tious  care  and  fit  monotony  of  rippling  music  in 
Hiawatha.  But  this  is  an  accident  and  an  inci 
dent.  It  is  not  the  theme  which  determines  the 
poet.  All  Scotland,  indeed,  sings  and  glows  in  the 
verse  of  Burns,  but  very  little  of  England  is  seen 
or  heard  in  that  of  Byron. 

In  no  other  conspicuous  figure  in  literary  his 
tory  are  the  man  and  the  poet  more  indissolubly 
blended  than  in  Longfellow.  The  poet  was  the 
man,  and  the  man  the  poet.  What  he  was  to  the 
stranger  reading  in  distant  lands,  by 

"  The  long  wash  of  Australasian  seas," 

that  he  was  to  the  most  intimate  of  his  friends. 
His  life  and  character  were  perfectly  reflected  in 
his  books.  There  is  no  purity  or  grace  or  feeling 
or  spotless  charm  in  his  verse  which  did  not  belong 
to  the  man.  There  was  never  an  explanation  to 
be  offered  for  him ;  no  allowance  was  necessary  for 


LONGFELLOW  203 

the  eccentricity  or  grotesqueness  or  wilfulness  or 
humor  of  genius.  Simple,  modest,  frank,  manly, 
he  was  the  good  citizen,  the  self-respecting  gentle 
man,  the  symmetrical  man. 

He  lived  in  an  interesting  historic  house  in  a 
venerable  university  town,  itself  the  suburb  of  a 
great  city ;  the  highway  running  by  his  gate  and 
dividing  the  smooth  grass  and  modest  green  ter 
races  about  the  house  from  the  fields  and  meadows 
that  sloped  gently  to  the  placid  Charles,  and  the 
low  range  of  distant  hills  that  made  the  horizon. 
Through  the  little  gate  passed  an  endless  proces 
sion  of  pilgrims  of  every  degree  and  from  every 
country  to  pay  homage  to  their  American  friend. 
Every  morning  came  the  letters  of  those  who  could 
not  come  in  person,  and  with  infinite  urbanity  and 
sympathy  and  patience  the  master  of  the  house  re 
ceived  them  all,  and  his  gracious  hospitality  but 
deepened  the  admiration  and  affection  of  the 
guests.  His  nearer  friends  sometimes  remonstrat 
ed  at  his  sweet  courtesy  to  such  annoying  "  devas 
tators  of  the  day."  But  to  an  urgent  complaint  of 
his  endless  favor  to  a  flagrant  offender,  Longfellow 
only  answered,  good-humoredly,  "If  I  did  not 
speak  kindly  to  him,  there  is  not  a  man  in  the 
world  who  would."  On  the  day  that  he  was  taken 
ill,  six  days  only  before  his  death,  three  school 
boys  came  out  from  Boston  on  their  Saturday  hoi- 


204  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

iday  to  ask  his  autograph.  The  benign  lover  of 
children  welcomed  them  heartily,  showed  them  a 
hundred  interesting  objects  in  his  house,  then 
wrote  his  name  for  them,  and  for  the  last  time. 

Few  men  had  known  deeper  sorrow.  But  no 
man  ever  mounted  upon  his  sorrow  more  surely 
to  higher  things.  Blessed  and  beloved,  the  singer  is 
gone,  but  his  song  remains,  and  its  pure  and  im 
perishable  melody  is  the  song  of  the  lark  in  the 
morning  of  our  literature  : 

"  Type  of  the  wise  who  soar  but  never  roam, 
True  to  the  kindred  points  of  heaven  and  home." 


OLIVER   WENDELL   HOLMES 


OLIYEK  WENDELL  HOLMES 

IN  1817  Bryant's  "Thanatopsis"  was  published 
in  the  North  American  Review.  Richard  Henry 
Dana,  the  elder,  who  was  then  one  of  the  editors, 
said  that  it  could  not  be  an  American  poem,  for 
there  was  no  American  who  could  have  written  it. 
But  it  does  not  seem  to  have  produced  a  remark 
able  impression  upon  the  public  mind.  The  plan 
et  rose  silently  and  unobserved.  Ten  years  after 
wards,  in  1827,  Dana's  own  "  Buccaneer  "  was  pub 
lished,  and  Christopher  North,  in  Blackwood,  sa 
luted  it  as  "  by  far  the  most  original  and  power 
ful  of  American  poetical  compositions."  But  it 
produced  in  this  country  no  general  effect  which  is 
remembered.  Nine  years  later,  in  1836,  Holmes's 
"  Metrical  Essay  "  was  delivered  before  the  Phi 
Beta  Kappa  Society  at  Harvard  College,  and  was 
as  distinct  an  event  in  literary  circles  as  Edward 
Everett's  oration  before  the  same  society  in  1824, 
or  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson's  in  1837,  or  Horace 
Bushnell's  in  1848,  or  Wendell  Phillips's  in  1881. 
Holmes  was  then  twenty-seven  years  old,  and  had 


208  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

just  returned  from  liis  professional  studies  in  Eu 
rope,  where,  as  in  his  college  days  at  Cambridge, 
where  he  was  born,  he  had  toyed  with  many 
Muses,  yet  still,  with  native  Yankee  prudence, 
held  fast  the  hand  of  ^Esculapius.  His  poem, 
like  the  address  of  Emerson  in  the  next  year, 
showed  how  completely  the  modern  spirit  of  re 
fined  and  exquisite  literary  cultivation  and  of  free 
and  undaunted  thought  had  superseded  the  un 
couth  literary  form  and  stern  and  rigid  Calvinism 
of  the  Mathers  and  early  Boston. 

The  melody  and  grace  of  Goldsmith's  line,  but 
with  a  fresh  local  spirit,  have  not  been  more  per 
fectly  reproduced,  nor  with  a  more  distinct  revela 
tion  of  a  new  spirit,  than  in  this  poem.  It  is  ret 
rospective  and  contemplative,  but  it  is  also  full 
of  the  buoyancy  of  youth,  of  the  consciousness  of 
poetic  skill,  and  of  blithe  anticipation.  Its  tender 
reminiscence  and  occasional  fond  elegiac  strain  are 
but  clouds  of  the  morning.  Its  literary  form  is 
exquisite,  and  its  general  impression  is  that  of 
bright,  elastic,  confident  power.  It  was  by  no 
means,  however,  a  first  work,  nor  was  the  poet 
unknown  in  his  own  home.  But  the  "  Metrical 
Essay"  introduced  him  to  a  larger  public,  while 
the  fugitive  pieces  already  known  were  the  assur 
ance  that  the  more  important  poem  was  not  a 
happy  chance,  but  the  development  of  a  quality 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES  209 

already  proved.  Seven  years  before,  in  1829,  the 
year  he  graduated  at  Harvard,  Holmes  began  to 
contribute  to  The  Collegian,  a  college  magazine. 
Two  years  later,  in  1831,  appeared  the  New 
England  jtfagazine,  in  which  the  young  writer, 
as  he  might  himself  say,  took  the  road  with  his 
double  team  of  verse  and  prose,  holding  the  rib 
bons  with  unsurpassed  lightness  and  grace  and 
skill,  now  for  two  generations  guiding  those  fleet 
and  well-groomed  coursers,  which  still  show  their 
heels  to  panting  rivals,  the  prancing  team  behind 
which  we  have  all  driven  and  are  still  driving  with 
constant  and  undirninished  delight. 

Mr.  F.  B.  Sanborn,  whose  tribute  to  Holmes  on 
his  eightieth  birthday  shows  how  thorough  was 
his  research  for  that  labor  of  love,  tells  us  that  his 
first  contribution  to  the  New  England  Magazine 
was  published  in  the  third  or  September  number 
of  the  first  year,  1831.  It  was  a  copy  of  verses  of 
an  unpromising  title  —  "  To  an  Insect."  But  that 
particular  insect,  seemingly  the  creature  of  a  day, 
proved  to  be  immortal,  for  it  was  the  katydid, 
whose  voice  is  perennial  : 

"Thou  sayest  an  undisputed  thing 
In  such  a  solemn  way." 

In  the  contributions  of  the  young  graduate  the 
high  spirits  of  a  frolicsome  fancy  effervesce  and 


14 


210  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

sparkle.  But  their  quality  of  a  new  literary  tone 
and  spirit  is  very  evident.  The  ease  and  fun  of 
these  bright  prolusions,  without  impudence  or 
coarseness,  the  poetic  touch  and  refinement,  were 
as  unmistakable  as  the  brisk  pungency  of  the  gibe. 
The  stately  and  scholarly  Boston  of  Channing, 
Dana,  Everett,  and  Ticknor  might  indeed  have 
looked  askance  at  the  literary  claims  of  such  lines 
as  these  "  Thoughts  in  Dejection  "  of  a  poet  won 
dering  if  the  path  to  Parnassus  lay  over  Charles- 
town  or  Chelsea  bridge : 

"  What  is  a  poet's  fame  ? 

Sad  hints  about  his  reason, 
And  sadder  praise  from  gazetteers, 
To  be  returned  in  season. 

"  For  him  the  future  holds 

No  civic  wreath  above  him ; 
Nor  slated  roof  nor  varnished  chair, 
Nor  wife  nor  child  to  love  him. 

"Maid  of  the  village  inn, 

Who  workest  woe  on  satin, 
The  grass  in  black,  the  graves  in  green, 
The  epitaph  in  Latin, 

"  Trust  not  to  them  who  say 

In  stanzas  they  adore  thee  ; 
Oh,  rather  sleep  in  church-yard  clay, 
With  maudlin  cherubs  o'er  thee  1" 

The  lines  to  the  katydid,  with  a  L'Inconnue  " — 
"Is  thy  name  Mary,  maiden  fair  ?" — 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES  211 

published  in  the  magazine  at  about  the  same  time, 
disclose  Holmes's  natural  melody  and  his  fine  in 
stinct  for  literary  form.  But  his  lyrical  fervor 
finds  its  most  jubilant  expression  at  this  time  in 
"  Old  Ironsides,"  written  at  the  turning-point  in 
the  poet's  life,  when  he  had  renounced  the  study 
of  the  law,  and  was  deciding  upon  medicine  as  his 
profession.  The  proposal  to  destroy  the  frigate 
Constitution,  fondly  and  familiarly  known  as  "  Old 
Ironsides,"  kindled  a  patriotic  frenzy  in  the  sensi 
tive  Boston  boy,  which  burst  forth  into  the  noble 

lyric, 

"  Ay,  tear  her  tattered  ensign  down !" 

I  There  had  been  no  American  poetry  with  a 
truer  lilt  of  song  than  these  early  verses,  and  there 
has  been  none  since.  Two  years  later,  in  1833, 
Holmes  went  to  complete  his  medical  studies  in 
Paris,  and  the  lines  to  a  grisette — 

"Ah,  Clemence,  when  I  saw  thee  last 
Trip  down  the  Rue  de  Seine  !" — 

published  upon  his  return  in  his  first  volume  of 
verse,  are  a  charming  illustration  of  his  lyrical 
genius.  His  limpid  line  never  flowed  more  clearly 
than  in  this  poem.  It  has  the  pensive  tone  of  all 
his  best  poems  of  the  kind,  but  it  is  the  half-happy 
sadness  of  youth. 

All  these  early  verses  have  an  assured  literary 


212  LITERAR  Y  AND  SOCIAL  ESS  A  TS 

form.  The  scope  and  strain  were  new,  but  their 
most  significant  quality  was  not  melody  nor  pen- 
//  sive  grace,  but  humor.  This  was  ingrained  and 
genuine.  Sometimes  it  was  rollicking,  as  in  "  The 
Height  of  the  Kidiculous"  and  "The  Septem 
ber  Gale."  Sometimes  it  was  drolly  meditative, 
as  in  "Evening,  by  a  Tailor."  Sometimes  it 
was  a  tearful  smile  of  the  deepest  feeling,  as  in 
the  most  charming  and  perfect  of  these  poems, 
"  The  Last  Leaf,"  in  which  delicate  and  searching 

I  pathos  is  exquisitely  fused  with   tender  gayety. 

j  The  haunting  music  and  meaning  of  the  lines, 

"The  mossy  marbles  rest 
On  the  lips  that  he  has  pressed 

In  their  bloom, 

And  the  names  he  loved  to  hear 
Have  been  carved  for  many  a  year 

On  the  tomb," 

lingered  always  in  the  memory  of  Lincoln,  whose 
simple  sincerity  and  native  melancholy  would  in 
stinctively  have  rejected  any  false  note.  It  is  in 
such  melody  as  that  of  the  "  Last  Leaf  "  that  we 
feel  how  truly  the  grim  old  Puritan  strength  has 
become  sweetness. 

To  this  poetic  grace  and  humor  and  music, 
which  at  that  time  were  unrivalled,  although  the 
early  notes  of  a  tuneful  choir  of  awakening  song 
sters  were  already  heard,  the  young  Holmes  added 


II 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES  213 

the  brisk  and  crisp  and  sparkling  charm  of  his 
prose.  From  the  beginning  his  coursers  were 
paired,  and  with  equal  pace  they  have  constantly 
held  the  road.  In  the  New  England  Magazine 
for  November  in  the  same  year,  1831,  a  short 
paper  was  published  called  the  u  Autocrat  of  the 
Breakfast  Table."  The  tone  of  placid  dogmatism 
and  infallible  finality  with  which  the  bulls  of  the 
domestic  pope  are  delivered  is  delightfully  famil 
iar.  This  earliest  one  has  perhaps  more  of  the 
cardinal's  preliminary  scarlet  than  of  the  mature 
papal  white,  but  in  its  first  note  the  voice  of  the 
Autocrat  is  unmistakable  : 

"  Somebody  was  rigmarolling  the  other  day  about  the 
artificial  distinctions  of  society. 

"'Madam,'  said  I,  'society  is  the  same  in  all  large 
places.  I  divide  it  thus : 

'1.  People  of  cultivation  who  live  in  large  houses. 

'  2.  People  of  cultivation  who  live  in  small  houses. 

'3.  People  without  cultivation  who  live  in  large  houses. 

'  4.  People  without  cultivation  who  live  in  small  houses. 

'5.  Scrubs.' 

An  individual  at  the  upper  end  of  the  table  turned  pale 
and  left  the  room  as  I  finished  with  the  monosyllable." 

"  'Tis  sixty  years  since,"  but  that  drop  is  of  the 
same  characteristic  transparency  and  sparkle  as  in 
the  latest  Tea-Cup. 

The  time  in  which  the  New  England  Maga 
zine  was  published,  and  these  firstlings  of  Holmes's' 
muse  appeared,  was  one  of  prophetic  literary  stir 


214  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

in  New  England.  There  were  other  signs  than 
those  in  letters  of  the  breaking -up  of  the  long 
Puritan  winter.  A  more  striking  and  extreme 
reaction  from  the  New  England  tradition  could 
not  well  be  imagined  than  that  which  was  offered 
by  Nathaniel  Parker  Willis,  of  whom  Holmes 
himself  says  "that  he  was  at  the  time  something 
between  a  remembrance  of  Count  D'Orsay  and  an 
anticipation  of  Oscar  Wilde."  Willis  was  a  kind 
ly  saunterer,  the  first  Boston  dandy,  who  began 
his  literary  career  with  grotesque  propriety  as  a 
sentimentalizer  of  Bible  stories,  a  performance 
which  Lowell  gayly  called  inspiration  and  water. 
In  what  now  seems  a  languid,  Byronic  way,  he 
figured  as  a  Yankee  Pelham  or  Vivian  Grey. 
Yet  in  his  prose  and  verse  there  was  a  tacit  pro 
test  against  the  old  order,  and  that  it  was  felt  is 
shown  by  the  bitterness  of  ridicule  and  taunt  and 
insult  with  which,  both  publicly  and  privately, 
this  most  amiable  youth  was  attacked,  who,  at 
that  time,  had  never  said  an  ill-natured  word  of 
anybody,  and  who  was  always  most  generous  in 
his  treatment  of  his  fellow-authors. 

The  epoch  of  Willis  and  the  New  England  Mag 
azine  is  very  notable  in  the  history  of  Ameri 
can  literature.  The  traditions  of  that  literature 
were  grave  and  even  sombre.  Irving,  indeed,  in 
his  Knickerbocker  and  Rip  Yan  Winkle  and  Ich- 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES  215 

abod  Crane,  and  in  the  general  gayety  of  his  liter 
ary  touch,  had  emancipated  it  from  strict  alle 
giance  to  the  solemnity  of  its  precedents,  and  had 
lighted  it  with  a  smile.  He  supplied  a  quality  of 
grace  and  cheerfulness  which  it  had  lacked,  and 
without  unduly  magnifying  his  charming  genius, 
it  had  a  natural,  fresh,  and  smiling  spirit,  which, 
amid  the  funereal,  theologic  gloom,  suggests  the 
sweetness  and  brightness  of  morning.  In  its  ef 
fect  it  is  a  breath  of  Chaucer.  When  Knicker 
bocker  was  published,  Joel  Barlow's  "Hasty- 
Pudding  "  was  the  chief  achievement  of  American 
literary  humor.  Mark  Twain  and  Charles  Dudley 
Warner  were  not  yet  "the  wits  of  Hartford." 
Those  who  bore  that  name  held  it  by  brevet.  In 
deed,  the  humor  of  our  early  literature  is  pathetic. 
In  no  State  was  the  ecclesiastical  dominance  more 
absolute  than  in  Connecticut,  and  nothing  shows 
more  truly  how  absolute  and  grim  it  was  than  the 
fact  that  the  performances  of  the  "  wits  "  in  that 
State  were  regarded  —  gravely,  it  must  have  been 
• — as  humor. 

For  a  long  time  there  was  no  vital  response  in 
Kew  England  to  the  chord  touched  by  Irving. 
Yet  Boston  was  then  unquestionably  the  chief 
seat  of  American  letters.  Dennie  had  established 
his  Portfolio  in  Philadelphia  in  1801,  but  in  1805 
the  Monthly  Antholoqy*  which 


216  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

reproduced  in  the  North  American  Review,  ap 
peared  in  Boston,  and  was  the  organ  or  illustration 
of  the  most  important  literary  and  intellectual 
life  of  the  country  at  that  time.  The  opening  of 
the  century  saw  the  revolt  against  the  supremacy 
of  the  old  Puritan  Church  of  New  England  —  a 
revolt  within  its  own  pale.  This  clerical  protest 
against  the  austere  dogmas  of  Calvinism  in  its  an 
cient  seat  was  coincident  with  the  overthrow  in 
the  national  government  of  Federalism  and  the 
political  triumph  of  Jefferson  and  his  party.  Si 
multaneously  also  with  the  religious  and  political 
disturbance  was  felt  the  new  intellectual  and  liter 
ary  impulse  of  which  the  Anthology  was  the  or 
gan.  But  the  religious  and  literary  movements 
were  not  in  sympathy  with  the  political  revolu 
tion,  although  they  were  all  indications  of  emanci 
pation  from  the  dominance  of  old  traditions,  the 
mental  restlessness  of  a  people  coming  gradually 
to  national  consciousness. 

Mr.  Henry  Adams,  in  remarking  upon  this  sit 
uation  in  his  history  of  Madison's  administration, 
points  out  that  leaders  of  the  religious  protest 
which  is  known  as  the  Unitarian  Secession  in  New 
England  were  also  leaders  in  the  intellectual  and 
literary  awakening  of  the  time,  but  had  no  sym 
pathy  with  Jefferson  or  admiration  of  France. 
Bryant's  father  was  a  Federalist;  the  club  that 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES  217 

conducted  the  Anthology  and  the  North  Ameri 
can  Review  was  composed  of  Federalists ;  and  the 
youth  whose  "  Thanatopsis  "  is  the  chief  distinction 
of  the  beginning  of  that  Review,  and  the  morning 
star  of  American  poetry,  was,  as  a  boy  of  thirteen, 
the  author  of  the  "Embargo,"  a  performance  in 
which  the  valiant  Jack  gave  the  giant  Jefferson 
no  quarter.  The  religious  secession  took  its  defi 
nite  form  in  Dr.  Channing's  sermon  at  the  ordina 
tion  of  Jared  Sparks  in  Baltimore  in  1819,  which 
powerfully  arraigned  the  dominant  theology  of 
the  time.  This  was  the  year  in  which  Irving's 
Sketch  Book  was  published.  Bryant's  first  vol 
ume  followed  a  year  or  two  later,  and  our  dis 
tinctive  literary  epoch  opened. 

Ten  years  afterwards,  when  Bryant  had  left  New 
England,  Dr.  Channing  was  its  most  dignified  and 
characteristic  name  in  literature.  But  he  was  dis 
tinctively  a  preacher,  and  his  serene  and  sweet 
genius  never  unbent  into  a  frolicsome  mood.  As 
early  as  1820  a  volume  of  Robert  Burns's  poems 
fell  into  Whittier's  hands  like  a  spark  into  tinder, 
and  the  flame  that  has  so  long  illuminated  and 
cheered  began  to  blaze.  It  was,  however,  a  soft 
ened  ray,  not  yet  the  tongue  of  lyric  fire  which  it 
afterwards  became.  But  none  of  the  poets  smiled 
as  they  sang.  The  Muse  of  New  England  was 
staid  and  stately  —  or  was  she,  after  all,  not  a  true 


218  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

daughter  of  Jove,  but  a  tenth  Muse,  an  Anne 
Bradstreet?  The  rollicking  laugh  of  Knickerbocker 
was  a  solitary  sound  in  the  American  air  until  the 
blithe  carol  of  Holmes  returned  a  kindred  echo. 

Willis  was  the  sign  of  the  breaking  spell.  But 
his  light  touch  could  not  avail.  The  Puritan 
spell  could  be  broken  only  by  Puritan  force,  and 
it  is  the  lineal  descendants  of  Puritanism,  often  the 
sons  of  clergymen  —  Emerson  and  Holmes  and 
Longfellow  and  Hawthorne  and  Whittier  —  who 
emancipated  our  literature  from  its  Puritan  sub 
jection.  In  1829  Willis,  as  editor  of  Peter  Par- 
ley^s  Token  and  the  American  Monthly  Magazine, 
was  aided  by  Longfellow  and  Hawthorne  and 
Motley  and  Hildreth  and  Mrs.  Child  and  Mrs. 
Sigourney,  and  the  elder  Bishop  Doane,  Park  Ben 
jamin  and  George  B.  Cheever,  Albert  Pike  and 
Rufus  Dawes,  as  contributors.  Willis  himself  was 
a  copious  writer,  and  in  the  American  Monthly 
first  appeared  the  titles  of  "Inkling  of  Adventure" 
and  "Pencillings  by  the  Way,"  which  he  after 
wards  reproduced  for  some  of  his  best  literary 
work.  The  Monthly  failed,  and  in  1831,  the  year 
that  the  New  England  Magazine  began,  it  was 
merged  in  the  New  York  Mirror,  of  which  Willis 
became  associate  editor,  leaving  his  native  city 
forever,  and  never  forgiving  its  injustice  towards 
him.  In  the  heyday  of  his  happy  social  career  in 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES  219 

England  he  wrote  to  liis  mother,  "The  mines  of 
Golconda  would  not  tempt  me  to  return  and  live 
in  Boston." 

This  was  the  literary  situation  when  Holmes 
was  preluding  in  the  magazine.  The  acknowl 
edged  poets  in  Boston  were  Dana,  Sprague,  and 
Pierpont.  Are  these  names  familar  to  the  readers 
of  this  essay  ?  How  much  of  their  poetry  can 
those  readers  repeat?  Ko  one  knows  more  surely 
than  he  who  writes  of  a  living  author  how  hard  it 
is  to  forecast  fame,  and  how  dangerous  is  prophecy. 
When  Edward  Everett  saluted  Percival's  early  vol 
ume  as  the  harbinger  of  literary  triumphs,  and  Em 
erson  greeted  Walt  Whitman  at  "  the  opening  of  a 
great  career,"  they  generalized  a  strong  personal 
impression.  They  identified  their  own  preference 
with  the  public  taste.  On  the  other  hand,  Haw 
thorne  says  truly  of  himself  that  he  was  long  the 
most  obscure  man  of  letters  in  America.  Yet  he 
had  already  published  the  Twice-told  Tales  and 
the  Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse^  the  two  series  of 
stories  in  which  the  character  and  quality  of  his 
genius  are  fully  disclosed.  But  although  Long 
fellow  hailed  the  publication  of  the  first  collection 
as  the  rising  of  a  new  star,  the  tone  of  his  com 
ment  is  not  that  of  the  discoverer  of  a  planet  shin- 
'ing  for  all,  but  of  an  individual  poetic  pleasure. 
The  prescience  of  fame  is  very  infrequent.  The 


220  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

village  gazes  in  wonder  at  the  return  of  the  fa 
mous  man  who  was  born  on  the  farm  under  the 
hill,  and  whose  latent  greatness  nobody  suspected  ; 
while  the  youth  who  printed  verses  in  the  corner 
of  the  county  paper,  and  drew  the  fascinated 
glances  of  palpitating  maidens  in  the  meeting 
house,  and  seemed  to  the  farmers  to  have  associat 
ed  himself  at  once  with  Shakespeare  and  Tupper 
and  the  great  literary  or  "littery  folks,"  never 
emerges  from  the  poet's  department  in  the  paper 
in  which  unconsciously  and  forever  he  has  been 
cornered.  It  would  be  a  grim  Puritan  jest  if  that 
department  had  been  named  from  the  corner  of 
the  famous  dead  in  Westminster  Abbey. 

If  the  Boston  of  sixty  years  ago  had  ventured 
to  prophesy  for  itself  literary  renown,  it  is  easy 
to  see  upon  what  reputations  of  the  time  it  would 
have  rested  its  claims.  But  if  the  most  familiar 
names  of  that  time  are  familiar  no  longer,  if  Kettell 
and  poems  from  the  United  States  Gazette  seem 
to  be  cemeteries  of  departed  reputations,  the  fate 
of  the  singers  need  not  be  deplored  as  if  Fame 
had  forgotten  them.  Fame  never  knew  them. 
Fame  does  not  retain  the  name  of  every  minstrel 
who  passes  singing.  But  to  say  that  Fame  does 
not  know  them  is  not  dispraise.  They  sang  for 
the  hearers  of  their  day,  as  the  players  played.  Is 
it  nothing  to  please  those  who  listen,  because  those 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES  221 

who  are  out  of  hearing  do  not  stop  and  applaud  ? 
If  we  recall  the  names  most  eminent  in  our  litera 
ture,  whether  they  were  destined  for  a  longer  or 
shorter  date,  we  shall  see  that  they  are  undeni 
ably  illustrations  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest. 
Turning  over  the  noble  volumes  of  Stedman  and 
Miss  Hutchinson,  in  which,  as  on  a  vast  plain,  the 
whole  line  of  American  literature  is  drawn  up  for 
inspection  and  review,  and  marches  past  like  the 
ghostly  midnight  columns  of  Napoleon's  grand 
army,  we  cannot  quarrel  with  the  verdict  of  time, 
nor  feel  that  injustice  has  been  done  to  Thamis  or 
to  Cawdor.  There  are  singers  of  a  day,  but  not 
less  singers  because  they  are  of  a  day.  The  insect 
that  flashes  in  the  sunbeam  does  not  survive  like 
the  elephant.  The  splendor  of  the  most  gorgeous 
butterfly  does  not  endure  with  the  faint  hue  of 
the  hills  that  gives  Athens  its  Pindaric  name.  And 
there  are  singers  who  do  not  sing.  What  says 
Holmes,  with  eager  sympathy  and  pity,  in  one  of 
his  most  familiar  and  most  beautiful  lyrics? — 

"We  count  the  broken  lyres  that  rest 

Where  the  sweet  waiting  singers  slumber, 
But  o'er  their  silent  sister's  breast 

The  wild  flowers  who  will  stoop  to  number  ? 
A  few  can  touch  the  magic  string, 

And  noisy  fame  is  proud  to  win  them  ; 
Alas,  for  those  that  never  sing, 

And  die  with  all  their  music  in  them  !" 


222  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

But  as  he  says  also  that  the  capacities  of  listen 
ers  at  lectures  differ  widely,  some  holding  a  gallon, 
others  a  quart,  and  others  only  a  pint  or  a  gill,  so  of 
the  singers  who  are  not  voiceless,  their  voices  dif 
fer  in  volume.  Some  are  organs  that  fill  the  air 
with  glorious  and  continuous  music;  some  are 
trumpets  blowing  a  ringing  peal,  then  sinking 
into  silence  ;  some  are  harps  of  melancholy  but 
faint  vibration ;  still  others  are  flutes  and  pipes, 
whose  sweet  or  shrill  note  has  a  dying  fall.  Some 
are  heard  as  the  wind  or  sea  is  heard ;  some  like 
the  rustle  of  leaves ;  some  like  the  chirp  of  birds. 
Some  are  heard  long  and  far  away;  others  across 
the  field  ;  others  hardly  across  the  street.  Fame  is 
perhaps  but  the  term  of  a  longer  or  shorter  fight 
with  oblivion  ;  but  it  is  the  warrior  who  "  drinks 
delight  of  battle  with  his  peers,"  and  holds  his 
own  in  the  fray,  who  finally  commands  the  eye 
and  the  heart.  There  were  poets  pleasantly  sing 
ing  to  our  grandfathers  whose  songs  we  do  not 
hear,  but  the  unheeded  voice  of  the  youngest  song 
ster  of  that  time  is  a  voice  we  heed  to-day.  Holmes 
wrote  but  two  "Autocrat"  papers  in  the  New 
England  Magazine — one  in  November,  1831,  and 
the  other  in  February,  1832.  The  year  after  the 
publication  of  the  second  paper  he  went  to  Paris, 
where  for  three  years  he  studied  medicine,  not  as 
a  poet,  but  as  a  physician,  and  he  returned  in  1836 


OLIVER  WEXDELL  HOLMES  223 

an  admirably  trained  and  highly  accomplished  pro 
fessional  man.  But  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  poem  of 
that  year,  like  the  tender  lyric  to  Clemence  upon 
leaving  Paris,  shows  not  only  that  the  poet  was 
not  dead,  but  that  he  did  not  even  sleep.  The 
"Metrical  Essay"  was  the  serious  announcement 
that  the  poet  was  not  lost  in  the  man  of  science, 
an  announcement  which  was  followed  by  the  pub 
lication  in  the  same  year  (1836)  of  his  first  volume 
of  poems.  This  was  three  years  before  the  publi 
cation  of  Longfellow's  first  volume  of  verses,  The 
Voices  of  the  Night. 

Holmes's  devotion  to  the  two  Muses  of  science 
and  letters  was  uniform  and  untiring,  as  it  was 
also  to  the  two  literary  forms  of  verse  and  prose. 
But  although  a  man  of  letters,  like  the  other  em 
inent  men  of  letters  in  Kew  England,  he  had  no 
trace  of  the  Bohemian.  Willis  was  the  only  noted 
literary  figure  that  ever  mistook  Boston  for  a  sea 
port  in  Bohemia,  and  he  early  discovered  his  error. 
The  fraternity  which  has  given  to  Boston  its  liter 
ary  primacy  has  been  always  distinguished  not 
only  for  propriety  of  life  and  respectability  in  its 
true  sense  of  worthiness  and  respect,  but  for  the 
possession  of  the  virtues  of  fidelity,  industry,  and 
good  sense,  which  have  carried  so  far  both  the 
influence  and  the  renown  of  Isew  England.  Xo- 

O 

where   has   the    Bohemian   tradition    been   more 


224  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

happily  and  completely  shattered  than  in  the  cir 
cle  to  which  Holmes  returned  from  his  European 
studies  to  take  his  place.  American  citizenship  in 
its  most  attractive  aspect  has  been  signally  illus 
trated  in  that  circle,  and  it  is  not  without  reason 
that  the  government  has  so  often  selected  from  it 
our  chief  American  representatives  in  other  coun 
tries. 

Dr.  Holmes,  as  he  was  now  called,  and  has  con 
tinued  to  be  called,  practised  his  profession  in  Bos 
ton  ;  but  whether  because  of  some  lurking  popular 
doubt  of  a  poet's  probable  skill  as  a  physician,  or 
from  some  lack  of  taste  on  his  part  for  the  de 
tails  of  professional  practice,  like  his  kinsman, 
"Wendell  Phillips,  and  innumerable  other  young  be 
ginners,  he  sometimes  awaited  a  professional  call 
longer  than  was  agreeable.  But  he  wrote  medical 
papers,  and  was  summoned  to  lecture  to  the  medi 
cal  school  at  Dartmouth  College  in  New  Hamp 
shire,  and  later  at  Pittsfield  in  Massachusetts, 
while  his  unfailing  charm  as  an  occasional  poet 
gave  him  a  distinctive  name.  Holmes's  felicity 
in  occasional  poems  is  extraordinary.  The  "  Met 
rical  Essay  "  was  the  first  and  chief  of  the  long 
series  of  such  verses,  among  which  the  songs  of 
'29,  the  poems  addressed  year  after  year  to  his 
college  classmates  of  that  year,  have  a  delightful 
and  endless  grace,  tenderness,  wit,  and  point.  Peg- 


OZ7PZ72  WENDELL  HOLMES  225 

asus  draws  well  in  harness  the  triumphant  chariot 
of  '29,  in  which  the  lucky  classmates  of  the  poet 
move  to  a  unique  and  happy  renown. 

As  a  reader,  Holmes  was  the  permanent  chal 
lenge  of  Mrs.  Browning's  sighing  regret  that  poets 
never  read  their  own  verses  to  their  worth.  Park 
Benjamin,  who  heard  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  poem, 
said  of  its  delivery  :  "  A  brilliant,  airy,  and  spirit- 
uelle  manner  varied  with  striking  flexibility  to  the 
changing  sentiment  of  the  poem,  now  deeply  im 
passioned,  now  gayly  joyous  and  nonchalant,  and 
anon  springing  up  into  almost  an  actual  flight  of 
rhapsody,  rendered  the  delivery  of  this  poem  a 
rich,  nearly  a  dramatic  entertainment."  This  was 
no  less  true  in  later  years  when  he  read  some  of 
his  poems  in  New  York  at  Bishop  Potter's,  then 
rector  of  Grace  Church,  or  of  the  reading  of  the 
poem  at  the  doctors'  dinner  given  to  him  by  the 
physicians  of  New  York  a  little  later. 

Holmes's  readings  were  like  improvisations.  The 
poems  were  expressed  and  interpreted  by  the 
whole  personality  of  the  poet.  The  most  subtle 
touch  of  thought,  the  melody  of  fond  regret,  the 
brilliant  passage  of  description,  the  culmination  of 
latent  fun  exploding  in  a  keen  and  resistless  jest, 
all  these  were  vivified  in  the  sensitive  play  of  man 
ner  and  modulation  of  tone  of  the  reader,  so  that 
a  poem  by  Holmes  at  the  Harvard  Commence- 


15 


226  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

ment  dinner  was  one  of  the  anticipated  delights 
which  never  failed.  This  temperament  implied 
an  oratorical  power  which  naturally  drew  the  poet 
into  the  lecture  lyceum  when  it  was  in  its  prime, 
in  the  decade  between  1850  and  1860.  During 
that  time  the  popular  lecture  was  a  distinct  and 
effective  public  force,  and  not  the  least  of  its  ser 
vices  was  its  part  in  instructing  and  training  the 
public  conscience  for  the  great  contest  of  the  Civil 
War. 

The  year  1831,  in  which  Holmes's  literary  ac 
tivity  began,  was  also  the  year  on  whose  first  day 
the  first  number  of  Garrison's  Liberator  appeared, 
and  the  final  period  of  the  slavery  controversy 
opened.  But  neither  this  storm  of  agitation  nor 
the  transcendental  mist  that  a  few  years  later  over 
hung  intellectual  New  England  greatly  affected  the 
poet. 

In  the  first  number  of  the  "  Autocrat "  there  is 
a  passage  upon  puns,  which,  crackling  with  fun, 
shows  his  sensitive  scepticism.  The  "  Autocrat  " 
says :  "  In  a  case  lately  decided  before  Miller,  J., 
Doe  presented  Roe  a  subscription  paper,  and 
urged  the  claims  of  suffering  humanity.  Roe  re 
plied  by  asking  when  charity  was  like  a  top.  It 
was  in  evidence  that  Doe  preserved  a  dignified  si 
lence.  Roe  then  said,  '  When  it  begins  to  hum.' 
There  are  temperaments  of  a  refined  suspicious- 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES  227 

ness  to  which,  when  the  plea  of  reform  is  urged, 
the  claims  of  suffering  humanity  at  once  begin  to 
hum.  The  very  word  reform  irritates  a  peculiar 
kind  of  sensibility,  as  a  red  flag  stirs  the  fury  of  a 
bull.  A  noted  party  leader  said,  with  inexpressi 
ble  scorn,  '  When  Dr.  Johnson  defined  the  word 
patriotism  as  the  last  refuge  of  a  scoundrel,  he  had 
not  learned  the  infinite  possibilities  of  the  word 
refa-a-r-m.J " 

The  acridity  of  this  jest  is  wholly  unknown  to 
the  "  Autocrat,"  who  has  moved  always  with  reform, 
if  not  always  with  reformers,  and  whose  protest 
against  bigotry  is  as  searching  as  it  is  sparkling. 
!N"ot  only  has  his  ear  been  quick  to  detect  the 
hum  of  Mr.  Honeythunder's  loud  appeal,  but  his 
eye  to  catch  the  often  ludicrous  aspect  of  honest 
whimsey.  During  all  the  early  years  of  his  liter 
ary  career  he  flew  his  flashing  darts  at  all  the 
"isms,"  and  he  fell  under  the  doubt  and  censure 
of  those  earnest  children  of  the  time  whom  the 
gay  and  clever  sceptics  derided  as  apostles  of  the 
newness.  When  Holmes  appeared  upon  the  lect 
ure  platform  it  was  to  discourse  of  literature  or 
science,  or  to  treat  some  text  of  social  manners  or 
morals  with  a  crisp  Poor  Richard  sense  and  moth 
er  wit,  and  a  brilliancy  of  illustration,  epigram,  and 
humor  that  fascinated  the  most  obdurate  "come- 
outer."  Holmes's  lectures  on  the  English  poets  at 


228  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

the  Lowell  Institute  were  among  the  most  noted 
of  that  distinguished  platform,  and  everywhere  the 
poet  was  one  of  the  most  popular  of  "  attractions." 
There  were  not  wanting  those  who  maintained 
that  his  use  of  the  platform  was  the  correct  one, 
and  that  the  orators  who,  often  by  happy  but  in 
cisive  indirection,  fought  the  good  fight  of  the 
hour  abused  their  opportunity. 

It  was  while  Holmes  was  still  a  professor,  but 
still  also  touching  the  lyre  and  writing  scientific 
essays  and  charming  the  great  audiences  of  the 
lecture  lyceum.  that  in  the  first  number  of  the 
Atlantic  Monthly,  in  November,  1857,  the  "Auto 
crat  of  the  Breakfast  Table "  remarked,  "  I  was 
just  going  to  say,  when  I  was  interrupted,"  and 
resumed  the  colloquies  of  the  New  England  Mag 
azine.  He  had  been  interrupted  twenty-two  years 
before.  But  as  he  began  again  it  was  plain  that 
it  was  the  same  voice,  yet  fuller,  stronger,  richer, 
and  that  we  were  listening  to  one  of  the  wisest  of 
wits  and  sharpest  of  observers.  Emerson  warns 
us  that  superlatives  are  to  be  avoided.  But  it  will 
not  be  denied  that  the  "  Autocrat "  belongs  in  the 
highest  rank  of  modern  magazine  or  periodical  lit 
erature,  of  which  the  essays  of  "  Elia "  are  the 
type.  The  form  of  the  "Autocrat"  —  a  semi- 
dramatic,  conversational,  descriptive  monologue — 
is  not  peculiar  to  Holmes's  work,  but  the  treat- 


OLIVER   WENDELL  HOLMES  229 

ment  of  it  is  absolutely  original.  The  manner  is 
as  individual  and  unmistakable  as  that  of  Elia  him 
self.  It  would  be  everywhere  recognized  as  the 
Autocrat's.  During  the  intermission  of  the  pa 
pers  the  more  noted  Macaulay  flowers  of  litera 
ture,  as  the  Autocrat  calls  them,  had  bloomed ; 
Carlyle's  Sartor  Resartm  and  reviews,  Christo 
pher  North's  Nodes  (now  fallen  into  ancient 
night),  Thackeray's  Roundabout  Papers,  Lowell's 
Hosea  Biglow — a  whole  library  of  magazine  and 
periodical  literature  of  the  first  importance  had  ap 
peared.  But  the  Autocrat  began  again,  after  a 
quarter  of  a  century,  musical  with  so  rich  a  chor 
us,  and  his  voice  was  clear,  penetrating,  master 
ful,  and  distinctively  his  own. 

The  cadet  branch  of  English  literature — the 
familiar  colloquial  periodical  essay,  a  comment 
upon  men  and  manners  and  life — is  a  delight 
ful  branch  of  the  family,  and  traces  itself  back  to 
Dick  Steele  and  Addison.  Hazlitt,  who  belonged 
to  it,  said  that  he  preferred  the  T-atler  to  the 
Spectator ;  and  Thackeray,  who  consorted  with 
it  proudly,  although  he  was  of  the  elder  branch, 
restored  Sir  Richard,  whose  habits  had  cost  him  a 
great  deal  of  his  reputation,  to  general  favor.  The 
familiar  essay  is  susceptible,  as  the  eighteenth 
and  nineteenth  centuries  show,  of  great  variety 
and  charm  of  treatment.  What  would  the  Chris- 


230  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

tian  Hero,  writing  to  his  Prue  that  he  would  be 
with  her  in  a  pint  of  wine's  time,  have  said  to 
"Blakesmoor"  and  "Oxford  in  the  Vacation"? 
Yet  Lamb  and  Steele  are  both  consummate  mas 
ters  of  the  essay,  and  Holmes,  in  the  "  Autocrat," 
has  given  it  a  new  charm.  The  little  realm  of  the 
Autocrat,  his  lieges  of  the  table,  the  persons  of  the 
drama,  are  at  once  as  definitely  outlined  as  Sir 
Roger's  club.  Unconsciously  and  resistlessly  we 
are  drawn  within  the  circle ;  we  are  admitted  ad 
eundem,  and  become  the  targets  of  the  wit,  the 
irony,  the  shrewd  and  sharp  epigram,  the  airy 
whim,  the  sparkling  fancy,  the  curious  and  recon 
dite  thought,  the  happy  allusion,  the  felicitous 
analogy,  of  the  sovereign  master  of  the  feast. 

The  index  of  the  Autocrat  is  in  itself  a  unique 
work.  It  reveals  the  whimsical  discursiveness  of 
the  book ;  the  restless  hovering  of  that  brilliant 
talk  over  every  topic,  fancy,  feeling,  fact ;  a  hum 
ming-bird  sipping  the  one  honeyed  drop  from  every 
flower  ;  or  a  huma,  to  use  its  own  droll  and  capi 
tal  symbol  of  the  lyceum  lecturer,  the  bird  that 
never  lights.  There  are  few  books  that  leave  more 
distinctly  the  impression  of  a  mind  teeming  with 
riches  of  many  kinds.  It  is,  in  the  Yankee  phrase, 
thoroughly  wideawake.  There  is  no  languor,  and 
it  permits  none  in  the  reader,  who  must  move 
along  the  page  warily,  lest  in  the  gay  profusion 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES  231 

of  the  grove,  unwittingly  defrauding  himself  of 
delight,  he  miss  some  flower  half  hidden,  some 
gem  chance-dropped,  some  darting  bird.  Howells's 
Letters  was  called  a  chamber-window  book,  a  book 
supplying  in  solitude  the  charm  of  the  best  soci 
ety.  We  could  all  name  a  few  such  in  our  own 
literature.  Would  any  of  them,  or  many,  take 
precedence  of  the  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast 
Table? 

It  is  in  this  book  that  the  value  of  the  scientific 
training  to  the  man  of  letters  is  illustrated,  not 
only  in  furnishing  noble  and  strong  analogies,  but 
in  precision  of  observation  and  accuracy  of  state 
ment.  In  Holmes's  style,  the  definiteness  of  form 
and  the  clearness  of  expression  are  graces  and  virt 
ues  which  are  due  to  his  exact  scientific  study,  as 
well  as  to  the  daylight  quality  of  his  mind. 

The  delicate  apprehension  of  the  finer  and  ten 
derer  feelings  which  is  disclosed  in  the  little  pas 
sages  of  narrative  in  the  record  of  the  Autocrat 
and  of  his  legitimate  brothers,  the  Professor  and 
the  Poet,  at  the  Breakfast  Table,  gives  a  grace  and 
a  sweetness  to  the  work  which  naturally  flow  into 
the  music  of  the  poems  with  which  the  diary  of 
a  conversation  often  ends.  These  traits  in  the 
Autocrat  suggested  that  he  would  yet  tell  a  dis 
tinct  story,  which  indeed  came  while  the  trilogv 
of  the  Breakfast  Table  was  yet  proceeding.  Elsie 


232  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

Venner  and  the  Guardian  Angel,  the  two  novels 
of  Holmes's,  are  full  of  the  same  briskness  and 
acuteness  of  observation,  the  same  effusiveness  of 
humor  and  characteristic  Americanism,  as  the  Au 
tocrat.  Certain  aspects  of  New  England  life  and 
character  are  treated  in  these  stories  with  incom 
parable  vivacity  and  insight.  Holmes's  picture  is 
of  a  later  New  England  than  Hawthorne's,  but  it 
is  its  lineal  descendant.  It  is  another  facet  of  the 
Puritan  diamond  which  flashes  with  different  light 
in  the  genius  of  Hawthorne,  Emerson,  Lowell, 
Whittier,  Longfellow,  Holmes,  and  Judd  in  Mar 
garet.  For,  with  all  his  lyrical  instinct  and  rol 
licking  humor,  Holmes  is  essentially  a  New-Eng- 
lander,  and  one  of  the  most  faithful  and  shrewd 
interpreters  of  New  England. 

The  colloquial  habit  of  the  Autocrat  is  not  lost 
in  the  stories,  and  it  is  so  marked  generally  in 
Holmes's  writings  as  to  be  called  distinctive.  It 
is  a  fascinating  gift,  when  it  is  so  restrained  by 
taste  and  instinctive  refinement  as  not  to  become 
what  is  known  as  bumptiousness.  Thackeray, 
even  in  his  novels,  is  apt  to  drop  into  this  vein,  to 
talk  about  the  persons  of  his  drama  with  his  read 
er,  instead  of  leaving  them  to  play  out  their  part 
alone.  This  trait  offends  some  of  Thackeray's  au 
dience,  to  whom  it  seems  like  the  manager's  hand 
thrust  into  the  box  to  help  out  the  play  of  the 


OLIVER   WENDELL  HOLMES  233 

puppets.  They  resent  not  "the  damnable  faces" 
of  the  actors,  but  the  damnable  sermonizing  of 
the  author,  and  exhort  him  to  permit  the  play  to 
begin.  Thackeray  frankly  acknowledged  his  ten 
dency  to  preach,  as  he  called  it.  But  it  was  part 
of  the  man.  Without  the  private  personal  touch 
of  the  essayist  in  his  stories  they  would  not  be  his. 
This  colloquial  habit  is  very  winning  when  gov 
erned  by  a  natural  delicacy  and  an  exquisite  liter 
ary  instinct.  It  is  the  quality  of  all  the  authors 
who  are  distinctly  beloved  as  persons  by  their 
readers,  and  it  is  to  this  class  that  Holmes  es 
pecially  belongs. 

It  is  not  a  quality  which  is  easily  analyzed,  bul 
it  blends  a  power  of  sympathetic  observation  anc 
appreciation  both  of  the  thing  observed  and  the 
reader  to  whom  the  observation  is  addressed.  The 
Autocrat,  as  he  converses,  brightens  with  his  own 
clear  thought,  with  the  happy  quip,  the  airy  fan 
cy.  He  is  sure  of  your  delight,  not  only  in  the 
thought,  but  in  its  deft  expression.  He  in  turn  is 
delighted  with  your  delight.  He  warms  to  the  re 
sponsive  mind  and  heart,  and  feels  the  mutual  joy. 
The  personal  relation  is  established,  and  the  Auto 
crat's  audience  become  his  friends,  to  whom  he  de 
scribes  with  infinite  glee  the  effect  of  his  remarks 
upon  his  lieges  at  table.  No  other  author  takes 
the  reader  into  his  personal  confidence  in  ore  close- 

r^  OFTHE 

UNIVERSITY 


234  LITERARY  AND   SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

ly  than  Holmes,  and  none  reveals  his  personal 
temperament  more  clearly.  This  confidential  re 
lation  becomes  even  more  simple  and  intimate  as 
time  chastens  the  eagerness  of  youth  and  matures 
the  keen  brilliancy  of  the  blossom  into  the  softer 
bloom  of  the  fruit.  The  colloquies  of  the  Auto 
crat  under  the  characteristic  title  of  "  Over  the 
Tea-Cups  "  are  full  of  the  same  shrewd  sense  and 
wise  comment  and  tender  thought.  The  kindly 
mentor  takes  the  reader  by  the  button  or  lays  his 
hand  upon  his  shoulder,  not  with  the  rude  famili 
arity  of  the  bully  or  the  boor,  but  with  the  cour 
tesy  of  Montaigne,  the  friendliness  of  John  Au 
brey,  or  the  wise  cheer  of  Selden.  The  reader 
glows  with  the  pleasure  of  an  individual  greeting, 
and  a  wide  diocese  of  those  whom  the  Autocrat 
never  saw  plume  themselves  proudly  upon  his  per 
sonal  acquaintance. 

In  this  discursive  talk  about  one  of  the  Ameri 
can  authors  who  have  vindicated  the  position  of 
American  letters  in  the  literature  of  the  language 
we  have  not  mentioned  all  his  works.  It  is  the 
quality  rather  than  the  quantity  with  which  we 
are  concerned,  the  upright,  honorable,  pure  qual 
ity  of  the  poet,  the  wit,  the  scholar,  for  whom  the 
most  devoted  reader  is  called  to  make  no  plea,  no 
apology.  The  versatility  of  his  power  is  obvious, 
but  scarcely  less  so  the  uniformity  of  his  work. 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES  935 

It  is  a  power  which  was  early  mature.  For  many 
a  year  he  has  dwelt  upon  a  high  table-land  where 
the  air  is  equable  and  inspiring,  yet,  as  we  have 
hinted,  ever  softer  and  sweeter.  The  lyric  of  to 
day  glows  with  the  same  ardor  as  the  fervent  apos 
trophe  to  "  Old  Ironsides  "  or  the  tripping  saluta 
tion  to  the  remembered  and  regretted  Clemence : 

O 

it  is  only  less  eager.  The  young  Autocrat  who  re 
marked  that  the  word  " scrub"  dismissed  from 
table  a  fellow-boarder  who  turned  pale,  now  with 
the  same  smiling  acuteness  remarks  the  impru 
dent  politeness  which  tries  to  assure  him  that  it  is 
no  matter  if  he  is  a  little  older.  Did  anybody  say 
so?  The  easy  agility  with  which  he  cleared  "the 
seven-barred  gate  "  has  carried  him  over  the  eight 
bars,  and  we  are  all  in  hot  pursuit.  For  just  sixty 
years  since  his  first  gay  and  tender  note  was  heard, 
Holmes  has  been  fulfilling  the  promise  of  his 
matin  song.  He  has  become  a  patriarch  of  our 
literature,  and  all  his  countrymen  are  his  lovers. 


WASHINGTON   IRVING 


WASHINGTON   IKYING 

FORTY  years  ago,  upon  a  pleasant  afternoon,  you 
might  have  seen  tripping  with  an  elastic  step 
along  Broadway,  in  New  York,  a  figure  which 
even  then  would  have  been  called  quaint.  It  was 
a  man  of  about  sixty-six  or  sixty-seven  years  old, 
of  a  rather  solid  frame,  wearing  a  Talma,  as  a  short 
cloak  of  the  time  was  called,  that  hung  from  the 
shoulders,  and  low  shoes,  neatly  tied,  which  were 
observable  at  a  time  when  boots  were  generally 
worn.  The  head  was  slightly  declined  to  one 
side,  the  face  was  smoothly  shaven,  and  the  eyes 
twinkled  with  kindly  humor  and  shrewdness. 
There  was  a  chirping,  cheery,  old-school  air  in  the 
whole  appearance,  an  undeniable  Dutch  aspect, 
which,  in  the  streets  of  New  Amsterdam,  irresist 
ibly  recalled  Diedrich  Knickerbocker.  The  ob 
server  might  easily  have  supposed  that  he  saw 
some  later  descendant  of  the  renowned  Wouter 
Yan  Twiller  refined  into  a  nineteenth-century 
gentleman.  The  occasional  start  of  interest  as  the 
figure  was  recognized  by  some  one  in  the  passing 


240  LITERARY  AND   SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

throng,  the  respectful  bow,  and  the  sudden  turn 
to  scan  him  more  closely,  indicated  that  he  was 
not  unknown.  Indeed,  he  was  the  American  of 
his  time  universally  known.  This  modest  and 
kindly  man  was  the  creator  of  Diedrich  Knicker 
bocker  and  Rip  Yan  Winkle.  He  was  the  father 
of  our  literature,  and  at  that  time  its  patriarch. 
He  was  Washington  Irving. 

At  the  same  time  you  might  have  seen  another 
man,  of  slight  figure  and  rustic  aspect,  with  an  air 
of  seriousness,  if  not  severity,  moving  with  the 
crowd,  but  with  something  remote  and  reserved  in 
his  air,  as  if  in  the  city  he  bore  with  him  another 
atmosphere,  and  were  still  secluded  among  solitary 
hills.  In  the  bright  and  busy  street  of  the  city 
which  was  always  cosmopolitan,  and  in  which 
there  lingers  a  tradition,  constantly  renewed,  of 
good-natured  banter  of  the  losel  Yankee,  this  fig 
ure  passed  like  the  grave  genius  of  New  England. 
By  a  little  play  of  fancy  the  first  figure  might  have 
seemed  the  smiling  spirit  of  genial  cheerfulness 
and  humor,  of  kindly  sympathy  even  with  the  foi 
bles  and  weaknesses  of  poor  human  nature ;  and 
the  other  the  mentor  of  its  earnest  endeavor  and 
serious  duty.  For  he  was  the  first  of  our  poets, 
whose  "  Thanatopsis"  was  the  hymn  of  his  medita 
tions  among  the  primeval  forests  of  his  native 
hills,  and  who,  in  his  last  years,  sat  at  the  door  of 


WASHINGTON  IRVING  241 

his  early  home  and  looked  across  the  valley  of  the 
"West-field  to  the  little  town  of  Plain  field  upon  the 
wooded  heights  beyond,  whose  chief  distinction  is 
that  there  he  wrote  the  "  Waterfowl " ;  for  this 
graver  figure  was  the  poet  Bryant. 

If  in  the  same  walk  you  had  passed  those  two 
figures,  you  would  have  seen  not  only  the  first  of 
our  famous  prose  writers  and  the  first  of  our  ac 
knowledged  poets,  but  also  the  representatives  of 
the  two  fundamental  and  distinctive  qualities  of 
our  American  literature,  as  of  all  literature — its 
grave,  reflective,  earnest  character,  and  its  sport 
ive,  genial,  and  humorous  genius. 

At  the  time  of  which  I  speak  another  figure 
also  was  familiar  in  Broadway,  but  less  generally 
recognized  as  it  passed  than  either  of  the  others, 
although,  perhaps,  even  more  widely  known  to 
fame  than  they.  This  was  Cooper,  who  gave  us 
so  many  of  the  heroes  of  our  childhood's  delight, 
but  who  at  this  time  was  himself  the  hero  of  in 
numerable  lawsuits,  undertaken  to  chastise  the 
press  for  what  he  believed  to  be  unjust  and  libel- 
ous  comments  upon  himself.  Now  that  the  up 
roar  of  that  litigation  is  silent,  and  its  occasion  for 
gotten,  it  seems  comical  that  a  man  for  whom 
fame  had  already  rendered  a  favorable  judgment 
should  be  busily  seeking  the  opinion  of  local 
courts  upon  transitory  newspaper  opinions  of  hiin- 


16 


242  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

self  and  his  writings.  It  is  as  if  Dickens,  when 
the  whole  English-reading  world — judges  on  the 
bench  and  bishops  in  their  studies,  cobblers  in  their 
stalls  and  grooms  in  the  stables — were  all  laughing 
over  Pickwick,  should  have  sued  the  Eatanswill 
Gazette  for  calling  him  a  clown.  Thackeray  pro 
nounces  Cooper's  Long  Tom  Coffin  one  of  the 
prizemen  of  fiction.  That  is  a  final  judgment  by 
the  chief-justice.  But  who  knows  what  was  the 
verdict  in  Cooper's  lawsuits  to  vindicate  himself, 
and  who  cares?  When  Cooper  died  there  was  a 
great  commemorative  meeting  in  New  York. 
Daniel  Webster  presided,  and  praised  the  story 
teller;  Bryant  read  a  discourse  upon  him,  while 
Irving  sat  by  his  side.  One  of  the  triumvirate  of 
our  early  literature  was  gone,  and  two  remained 
to  foresee  their  own  future  in  the  honors  paid  to 
him.  Indeed,  it  was  to  see  them,  quite  as  much 
as  to  hear  of  their  dead  comrade,  that  the  multi 
tude  assembled  that  evening;  and  the  one  who 
was  seen  with  the  most  interest  was  Irving,  the 
one  in  whom  the  city  of  New  York  naturally  feels 
a  peculiar  right  and  pride,  as  the  most  renowned 
of  her  children. 

If  I  say  that  he  made  personally  the  same  im 
pression  that  his  works  make,  you  can  easily  see 
the  man.  As  you  read  the  story  of  his  life  you 
feel  its  constant  gayety  and  cheerfulness.  It  was 


WASHINGTON  IRVING  243 

the  life  of  a  literary  man  and  a  man  of  society — a 
life  without  events,  or  only  the  events  of  all  our 
lives,  except  that  it  lacks  the  great  event  of  mar 
riage.  In  place  of  it  there  is  a  tender  and  pathetic 
romance.  Irving  lived  to  be  seventy-six  years  old. 
At  twenty-six  he  was  engaged  to  a  beautiful  girl, 
who  died.  He  never  married  ;  but  after  his  death, 
in  a  little  box  of  which  he  always  kept  the  key, 
was  found  the  miniature  of  a  lovely  girl,  and  with 
it  a  braid  of  fair  hair,  and  a  slip  of  paper  on  which 
was  written  the  name  Matilda  Hoffman,  with  some 
pages  upon  which  the  writing  was  long  since 
faded.  That  fair  face  Irving  kept  all  his  life  in  a 
more  secret  and  sacred  shrine.  It  looks  out,  now 
and  then,  with  unchanged  loveliness  from  some 
pensive  passage,  which  he  seems  to  write  with 
wistful  melancholy  of  remembrance.  That  fond 
and  immortal  presence  constantly  renewed  the 
gentle  humanity,  the  tenderness  of  feeling,  the 
sweet  healthfulness  and  generous  sympathy  which 
never  failed  in  his  life  and  writings. 

He  was  born  in  the  city  of  New  York  in  1T83, 
the  year  in  which  the  Revolution  ended  in  the  ac 
knowledgment  of  American  independence.  The 
British  army  marched  out  of  the  city,  and  the 
American  army,  with  Washington  at  the  head, 
marched  in.  "  The  patriot's  work  is  ended  just 
as  my  boy  is  born,"  said  the  patriotic  mother, 


244  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

"and  the  boy  shall  be  named  Washington."  Six 
years  later,  when  Washington  returned  to  New 
York  to  be  inaugurated  President,  he  was  one  day 
going  into  a  shop  when  the  boy's  Scotch  nurse 
democratically  stopped  the  new  republican  chief 
magistrate  and  said  to  him,  "Please  your  honor, 
here's  a  bairn  was  named  for  you."  The  great 
man  turned  and  looked  kindly  on  his  little  name 
sake,  laid  his  hand  upon  his  head,  and  blessed  his 
future  biographer. 

The  name  of  no  other  American  has  been  so 
curiously  confused  with  Washington's  as  that  of 
Irving.  Many  a  young  fellow  puzzles  over  the 
connection  which  the  name  seerns  vaguely  to  im 
ply,  and  in  other  lands  the  identity  of  the  men  is 
confounded.  When  Irving  first  went  to  Europe, 
a  very  young  man,  well-educated,  courteous,  with 
great  geniality  of  manner  and  charm  of  conversa 
tion,  he  was  received  by  Prince  Torlonia,  the  bank 
er,  in  Rome,  with  unusual  and  flattering  civility. 
His  travelling  companion,  who  had  been  treat 
ed  by  the  prince  with  entire  indifference,  was 
perplexed  at  the  warmth  of  Irving's  welcome. 
Irving  laughingly  said  that  it  only  proved  the 
prince's  remarkable  discrimination.  But  the 
young  travellers  laughed  still  more  when  the 
prince  unconsciously  revealed  the  secret  of  his 
attentions  by  taking  his  guest  aside,  and  asking 


WASHINGTON  IRVING  245 

him  how  nearly  he  was  related  to  General  Wash 
ington. 

Many  years  afterwards,  when  he  had  become  fa 
mous,  an  English  lady  and  her  daughter  paused  in 
an  Italian  gallery  before  a  bust  of  Washington. 
"And  who  was  Washington,  mamma?"  asked  the 
daughter.  "  Why,  my  dear,  I  am  surprised  at 
your  ignorance,"  answered  the  mother,  "  he  was 
the  author  of  the  Sketch  Book"  Long  ago  in 
Berlin  I  was  talking  with  some  American  friends 
one  evening  at  a  cafe,  and  observed  a  German  in 
tently  listening  to  our  conversation  as  if  trying  his 
ability  to  understand  the  language.  Presently  he 
said  to  me,  politety,  "You  are  English,  no?"  But 
when  I  replied  "  No,  we  are  Americans" — "  Ameri 
cans!  he  exclaimed  enthusiastically,  grasping  my 
hand  and  shaking  it  warmly, "Americans,  ach  !  we 
all  know  your  great  General  Washington  Irving." 

Irving's  father  was  a  Presbyterian  deacon,  iu 
whose  heart  the  sterner  traditions  of  the  Cove 
nanters  lingered.  He  tried  hard  to  teach  his  son  to 
contemn  amusement,  and  to  impale  his  youth  upon 
the  five  points  of  Calvinism,  rather  than  to  play 
ball.  But  it  was  John  Knox  trying  to  curb  the 
tricksy  Ariel.  Perhaps  from  some  bright  mater 
nal  ancestor  the  boy  had  derived  his  sweet  gayety 
of  nature  which  nothing  could  repress.  His  airy 
spirits  bubbled  like  a  sunny  fountain  in  that  some- 


246  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

what  arid  household.  He  read  at  ten  a  transla 
tion  of  the  Orlando  Furioso,  and  his  father's  yard, 
doubtless  trim  and  well  kept  as  beseemed  a  dea 
con's  yard,  became  at  once  a  field  of  chivalry. 
Candles  were  forbidden  him  in  his  chamber,  but 
when  he  made  the  acquaintance  of  Robinson  Cru 
soe  and  Sindbad  the  Sailor,  he  secreted  lights  to  il 
luminate  his  innocent  revels  with  those  immortal 
playmates. 

The  amusements  which  were  permitted  were  of 
too  depressing  a  character  to  be  tolerated  by  the 
healthy  boy,  who,  like  the  duck  taking  to  the  water 
from  under  the  wing  of  the  astonished  hen,  some 
times  escaped  from  the  serious  house  at  night  by 
dropping  from  a  window,  and  with  a  delight  that 
must  have  torn  his  father's  heart  with  anguish 
had  he  known  it,  tasted  the  forbidden  fruit  of  the 
theatre.  It  was  a  Presbyterian  boy  who  tasted  it 
then  ;  but  in  the  same  city  many  years  afterwards  it 
was  a  Quaker  boy  whom  I  knew  who  was  also  enam 
oured  of  the  play.  "  John,"  said  his  grieved  father, 
"  is  this  dreadful  thing  true  that  I  hear  of  thee  ? 
Has  thee  ever  been  to  see  the  play-actress  Frances 
Kemble  ?"  "  Yes,  father,"  answered  the  heroic 
John.  "  I  hope  thee  has  not  been  more  than  once, 
John,"  said  the  afflicted  father.  "  Yes,  father," 
replied  John,  resolved  to  make  a  clean  breast  of 
his  sins,  "  more  than  thirty  times." 


WASHINGTON  IRVING  247 

It  is  useless  to  try  to  prevent  blue-birds  from 
flying  in  the  spring.  The  blithe  creatures  made 
to  soar  and  sing  will  not  be  restrained.  The  same 
kind  Providence  that  made  Calvin  made  Shake 
speare.  The  sun  is  higher  than  the  clouds,  and 
smiles  are  as  heaven-born  as  tears.  In  Emerson's 
poem  the  squirrel  says  to  the  mountain : 

"You're  not  so  small  as  I, 
And  not  half  so  spry : 


If  I  cannot  carry  forests  on  my  back 
Neither  can  you  crack  a  nut." 

It  was  in  vain  to  try  to  thwart  the  young  Irving's 
genius.  Yet  the  boy  who  a  little  later  was  to  light 
with  rosy  cheer  the  air  which,  as  Wendell  Phillips 
said,  was  still  black  with  sermons ;  who  was  to  give 
to  our  literature  its  first  distinctly  humorous  strain, 
and  innocently  to  amuse  the  world,  was  somehow 
or  other,  as  he  said,  "  taught  to  feel  that  everything 
pleasant  was  wicked." 

If  that  were  so,  what  a  sinner  Washington  Irv 
ing  was !  If  to  make  life  easier  by  making  it 
pleasanter,  if  to  outwit  trouble  by  gay  banter,  if 
with  satire  that  smiles  but  never  stings  to  correct 
foibles  and  to  quicken  good  impulses;  if  to  deepen 
and  strengthen  human  sympathy,  is  not  to  be  a 
human  benefactor,  what  makes  one  ?  When  Dr. 


248  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

Johnson  said  of  Garrlck  that  his  death  eclipsed 
the  gayety  of  nations,  he  did  not  mean  merely 
that  the  player  would  no  longer  make  men  laugh, 
but  that  he  could  no  longer  make  them  better. 
"If,  however,"  said  Irving — and  Willis  selected 
the  words  for  the  motto  of  his  second  volume 
of  verse  published  in  1827 — "I  can  by  a  lucky 
chance,  in  these  days  of  evil,  rub  out  one  wrin 
kle  from  the  brow  of  care,  or  beguile  the  heavy 
heart  of  one  moment  of  sadness ;  if  I  can,  now  and 
then,  penetrate  the  gathering  film  of  misanthropy, 
prompt  a  benevolent  view  of  human  nature,  and 
make  my  reader  more  in  good-humor  with  his 
fellow -beings  and  himself,  surely,  surely  I  shall 
not  then  have  written  entirely  in  vain." 

That  cannot  be  said  to  have  been  the  spirit  of 
any  American  author  before  Irving.  Our  colo 
nial  literature  was  mainly  political  and  theolog 
ical.  You  have  only  to  return  to  the  early  New 
England  days  in  the  stories  of  Hawthorne,  the 
magician  who  restores  with  a  shuddering  spell 
that  old,  sombre  life,  to  understand  the  character 
of  its  reading.  The  books  that  were  not  treatises 
upon  special  topics  all  seemed  to  say  with  one  of 
the  grim  bards  of  Calvinism  : 


"My  thoughts  on  awful  subjects  roll, 
Damnation  and  the  dead." 


WASHINGTON  IRVING  249 

Literature,  in  its  proper  sense,  there  was  none. 
There  was  no  imaginative  creation,  no  play  of 
fancy  and  humor,  no  subtle  charm  of  the  ideal 
life,  no  grace  and  delight  of  expression,  which  are 
essential  to  literature.  The  perpetual  twilight  and 
chill  of  the  New  England  Puritan  world  were  an 
arctic  winter  in  which  no  flower  of  poesy  bloomed 
and  no  bird  sang.  One  of  the  French  players 
who  came  to  this  country  with  Rachel  says,  in  his 
journal,  with  a  startled  air,  as  if  he  had  remarked 
in  Americans  a  universal  touch  of  lunacy,  that  he 
was  invited  to  take  a  pleasure-drive  to  Greenwood 
Cemetery.  Evidently  he  was  not  familiar  with 
Froissart's  epigram  nor  with  the  annals  of  the 
Puritan  fathers,  or  he  would  have  known  that 
their  favorite  pleasure-ground  was  the  graveyard. 
Judge  SewelPs  Journal,  the  best  picture  of  daily 
New  England  life  in  the  seventeenth  and  eigh 
teenth  centuries,  is  a  portrait  framed  in  black  and 
hung  with  thick  crape.  It  is  a  register  of  funer 
als — a  book  which  seems  to  require  a  suit  of  sables 
for  its  proper  reading. 

The  early  Christians  dwelt  so  often  and  so  long 
in  the  catacombs  that  when  they  emerged,  accus 
tomed  to  associate  life  with  the  tomb,  they  doubt 
less  regarded  the  whole  world  as  a  cemetery.  The 
American  Puritans  inherited  the  disposition  from 
their  early  confessors,  and  so  powerful  was  the 


250  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

tendency  that  it  laid  its  sombre  spirit  upon  the 
earliest  enduring  poem  in  our  literature,  and  the 
fresh  and  smiling  nature  of  the  new  world  was  first 
depicted  by  our  literary  art  as  a  tomb : 

"The  hills, 

Rock-ribbed  and  ancient  as  the  sun ;  the  vales 
Stretching  in  pensive  quietness  between ; 
The  venerable  woods ;  rivers  that  move 
In  majesty;  and  the  complaining  brooks 
That  make  the  meadows  green ;  and,  poured  round  all, 
Old  ocean's  gray  and  melancholy  waste, 
Are  but  the  solemn  decorations  all 
Of  the  great  tomb  of  man." 

"  Thanatopsis  "  is  the  swan-song  of  Puritanism. 
Indeed,  when  New  England  Puritanism  could 
sing,  as  for  the  first  time  it  did  in  the  verse  of 
Bryant,  the  great  change  was  accomplished.  Out 
of  strength  had  come  forth  sweetness.  I  am  not 
decrying  the  Puritans.  They  were  the  stern  build 
ers  of  the  modern  world,  the  unconscious  heralds 
of  wider  liberty,  and  a  kindlier  future  for  mankind. 

But 

' '  God  works  in  a  mysterious  way 
His  wonders  to  perform," 

and  never  more  mysteriously  than  when  he  chose 
as  the  pioneers  of  religious  liberty  in  the  New 
World  those  who  hung  Quakers,  and  as  the  found 
ers  of  civil  equality  those  who  permitted  only  mem 
bers  of  their  own  Church  to  vote. 


WA  SHIXG  TON  IR  VINO  251 

Irving  was  not  a  studious  boy.  He  did  not  go 
to  college.  He  read  some  law  at  sixteen,  but  he 
read  much  more  literature,  and  sauntered  in  the 
country  about  New  York  with  his  gun  and  fish 
ing-rod.  He  sailed  up  the  Hudson,  and  explored 
for  the  first  time  the  realm  that  was  presently  to 
be  his  forever  by  the  right  of  eminent  domain  of 
the  imagination.  New  York  was  a  snug  little  city 
in  those  days.  At  the  beginning  of  the  century 
it  was  all  below  the  present  City  Hall,  and  the 
young  fellow,  who  was  born  a  cosmopolitan,  great 
ly  enjoyed  the  charms  of  the  modest  society  in 
which  the  Dutch  and  the  English  circles  were  still 
somewhat  separated,  and  in  which  such  literary 
cultivation  as  there  was  was  necessarily  foreign. 
But  while  he  enjoyed  he  observed,  and  his  literary 
instinct  began  to  stir. 

Under  the  name  of  "Jonathan  Oldstyle,"  the 
young  Irving  printed  in  his  brother's  newspaper  es 
says  in  the  style  of  the  Spectator,  discussing  topics  of 
the  town,  and  the  modest  theatre  in  John  Street  and 
its  chance  actors,  as  if  it  had  been  Drury  Lane  with 
Garrick  and  Mrs.  Siddons.  The  little  town  kindly 
smiled  upon  the  lively  efforts  of  the  Presbyterian 
deacon's  son  ;  and  its  welcome  of  his  small  essays, 
the  provincial  echo  of  the  famous  Queen  Anne's 
men  in  London,  is  a  touching  revelation  of  our 
scant  and  spare  native  literary  talent.  The  essays 


252  LITER AR  Y  AND  SO  CIAL  ESS  A  YS 

are  forgotten  now,  but  they  were  enough  to  bring 
Charles  Brockden  Brown  to  find  the  young  author, 
and  to  tempt  him,  but  in  vain,  to  write  for  The 
Literary  Magazine  and  American  Register,  which 
the  novelist  was  just  beginning  in  Philadelphia, 
a  pioneer  of  American  literary  magazines,  which 
Brown  sustained  for  five  years. 

The  youthful  Addison  of  New  Amsterdam  was 
a  delicate  lad,  and  when  he  came  of  age  he  sailed 
for  France  and  the  Mediterranean,  and  passed  two 
years  in  travelling.  Napoleon  Bonaparte  was  em 
peror,  and  at  war  with  England,  and  the  young 
American,  despite  his  passport,  was  everywhere 
believed  to  be  an  Englishman.  Travelling  was 
hard  work  in  those  days  of  war,  but  the  cheery 
youth  proved  the  truth  of  the  proverb  that  a  light 
heart  and  a  whole  pair  of  breeches  go  round  the 
world.  At  Messina,  in  Sicily,  he  saw  Nelson's 
fleet  pass  through  the  strait,  looking  for  the 
French  ships ;  and  before  the  year  ended  the  fa 
mous  battle  of  Trafalgar  had  been  fought,  and  at 
Greenwich  in  England  Irving  saw  the  body  of 
the  great  sailor  lying  in  state,  wrapped  in  his  flag 
of  victory.  At  Rome  he  made  the  acquaintance 
of  Washington  Allston,  and  almost  resolved  to  be 
a  painter.  In  Paris  he  saw  Madame  de  Stael,  who 
overwhelmed  him  with  eager  questions  about  his 
remote  and  unknown  country,  and  in  London  he 


was  enchanted  by  Mrs.  Siddons.  Some  years  after 
wards,  when  the  Sketch  Book  had  made  him  fa 
mous,  he  was  presented  to  Mrs.  Siddons,  and  the 
great  actress  said  to  him,  in  her  deepest  voice  and 
with  her  stateliest  manner,  "You've  made  me 
weep."  The  modest  young  author  was  utterly 
abashed,  and  could  say  nothing.  After  the  publi 
cation  of  his  Bracebridge  Hall  he  was  once  more 
presented  to  her,  and  again  with  gloomy  grandeur 
she  said  to  him,  "You've  made  me  weep  again." 
This  time  Irving  received  the  solemn  salute  with 
more  composure,  and  doubtless  retorted  with  a 
compliment  magnificent  enough  even  for  the  sov 
ereign  Queen  of  Tragedy,  who,  as  her  niece  Mrs. 
Fanny  Kemble  said  of  her,  never  laid  aside  her 
great  manner,  and  at  the  dinner-table  brandished 
her  fork  and  stabbed  the  potatoes. 

Irving  returned  from  this  tour  with  established 
health— =a  refined,  agreeable,  exceedingly  handsome 
and  charming  gentleman ;  with  a  confirmed  taste 
for  society,  and  a  delightful  store  of  interesting 
recollection  and  anecdote.  "With  a  group  of  culti 
vated  and  lively  friends  of  his  own  age  he  dined 
and  supped  and  enjoyed  the  town,  and  a  little  an 
ecdote  which  he  was  fond  of  telling  shows  that 
the  good  old  times  were  not  unlike  the  good  new 
times :  One  morning,  after  a  gay  dinner,  Irving 
met  one  of  his  fellow-revellers,  who  told  him  that 


254  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

on  the  way  home,  after  draining  the  parting  bump 
er,  he  had  fallen  through  a  grating  in  the  side 
walk,  which  had  been  carelessly  left  open,  into  the 
vault  beneath.  It  was  impossible  to  climb  out, 
and  at  first  the  solitude  was  rather  dismal,  he  said; 
but  several  of  the  other  guests  fell  in,  in  the  course 
of  the  evening,  and,  on  the  whole,  they  had  quite 
a  pleasant  time  of  it. 

In  the  midst  of  this  frolicking  life,  and  grow 
ing  out  of  it,  Irving's  real  literary  career  began. 
With  his  brother  William,  and  his  friend  James  K. 
Paulding,  who  afterwards  wrote  the  Dutchman^ 
Fireside^  and  was  one  of  the  recognized  American 
authors  of  fifty  years  ago,  he  issued  every  fort 
night  a  periodical,  which  ran  for  twenty  numbers, 
and  stopped  in  the  midst  of  its  success.  It  was 
modelled  upon  the  Spectator  and  Goldsmith's  Citi 
zen  of  the  World)  describing  and  criticising  the 
manners  and  morals  of  the  town  with  extravagant 
humor  and  pungency,  and  a  rollicking  indepen 
dence  which  must  have  been  both  startling  and 
stimulating. 

Perhaps,  also,  the  town  was  secretly  pleased  to 
discover  that  it  was  sufficiently  important  to  be 
worthy  of  such  bright  raillery  and  humorous  re 
proof.  Salmagundi  was  only  a  Yiv el j  j end' esprit, 
and  Irving  was  never  proud  of  it.  "  I  know," 
said  Paulding,  writing  to  him  in  later  life,  "  you 


WASHINGTON  IRVING  255 

consider  old  Sal  as  a  sort  of  saucy,  flippant  trol- 
lope,  belonging  to  nobody,  and  not  worth  father 
ing."  But,  nevertheless,  Irving's  genius  was  try 
ing  its  wings  in  it,  and  pluming  itself  for  flight. 
Salmagundi  undoubtedly,  to  a  later  taste,  is  rather 
crude  and  cumbrous  fun,  but  it  is  interesting  as 
the  immediate  forerunner  of  our  earliest  work  of 
sustained  humor,  and  of  the  wit  of  Holmes  and 
Lowell  at  a  later  date.  When  it  was  discontinued, 
at  the  beginning  of  1SOS,  Irving  and  his  brother 
began  the  History  of  New  York,  which  was  orig 
inally  designed  to  be  a  parody  of  a  particular 
book.  But  the  work  was  interrupted  by  the  busi 
ness  difficulties  of  the  brother,  and  at  last  Irving 
resumed  it  alone,  recast  it  entirely,  and  as  he  fin 
ished  it  the  engagement  with  Matilda  Hoffman 
ended  with  her  death,  and  the  long  and  secret  ro 
mance  of  his  life  began. 

Knickerbocker's  History  was  published  just  be 
fore  Christmas,  1809,  and  made  a  merry  Christ 
mas  for  our  grandfathers  and  grandmothers  eighty 
years  ago.  The  fun  began  before  the  book  was 
published.  In  October  the  curiosity  of  the  town 
of  eighty  thousand  inhabitants  was  awakened  by  a 
series  of  skilful  paragraphs  in  the  Evening  Post. 
The  art  of  advertising  was  never  more  ingeniously 
illustrated.  Mr.  Fulkerson  himself  would  have 
paid  homage  to  the  artist.  One  day  the  quid- 


256  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

mines  found  this  paragraph  in  the  paper.     It  was 

headed, 

"DISTRESSING. 

"Left  his  lodgings,  some  time  since,  and  has  not  since 
been  heard  of,  a  small  elderly  gentleman,  dressed  in  an  old 
black  coat  and  cocked  hat,  by  the  name  of  Knickerbocker. 
As  there  are  some  reasons  for  believing  that  he  is  not  entirely 
in  his  right  mind,  and,  as  great  anxiety  is  entertained  about 
him,  any  information  concerning  him  left  either  at  the  Co 
lumbian  Hotel,  Mulberry  Street,  or  at  the  office  of  this  paper, 
will  be  thankfully  received. 

"  P.  S. — Printers  of  newspapers  would  be  aiding  the  cause 
of  humanity  by  giving  an  insertion  to  the  above. 

"  October  25th." 

This  was  followed  within  a  fortnight  by  another 
ingenious  lure  : 

"  To  the  Editor  of  the  Evening  Post: 

"  SIR, — Having  read  in  your  paper  of  the  26th  October  last 
a  paragraph  respecting  an  old  gentleman  by  the  name  of 
Knickerbocker,  who  was  missing  from  his  lodgings,  if  it 
would  be  any  relief  to  his  friends,  or  furnish  them  with  any 
clue  to  discover  where  he  is,  you  may  inform  them  that  a 
person  answering  the  description  was  seen  by  the  passengers 
of  the  Albany  stage  early  in  the  morning,  about  four  or  five 
weeks  ago,  resting  himself  by  the  side  of  the  road,  a  little 
above  Kingsbridge.  He  had  in  his  hands  a  small  bundle,  tied 
in  a  red  bandana  handkerchief.  He  appeared  to  be  travel 
ling  northward,  and  was  very  much  fatigued  and  exhausted. 

"  November  6.  A  TRAVELLER." 

Ten  days  after  came  a  letter  signed  by  Seth  Hari- 
daside,  landlord  of  the  Independent  Handaside : 

"COLUMBIAN  HOTEL,  Mulberry  Street. 

"SiR, — You  have  been  kind  enough  to  publish  in  your 
paper  a  paragraph  about  Mr.  Diedrich  Knickerbocker,  who 


WASHINGTON  IRVING  25*7 

was  missing  so  strangely  from  his  lodgings  some  time  since. 
Nothing  satisfactory  has  been  heard  from  the  old  gentleman 
since,  but  a  very  curious  written  Book  has  been  found  in  his 
room  in  his  own  handwriting.  Now,  I  wish  you  to  notice 
him,  if  he  is  still  alive,  that  if  he  does  not  return  and  pay  off 
his  bill  for  board  and  lodging,  I  shall  have  to  dispose  of  his 
Book  to  satisfy  me  for  the  same." 

This  is  very  simple  jesting,  but  at  that  time  it 
was  very  effective  in  a  town  that  enjoyed  the  high 
spirits  of  Salmagundi.  Moreover,  the  book  which 
was  announced  in  this  lively  strain  was  as  unprece 
dented  as  the  announcement.  It  was  a  very  seri 
ous  time  and  country,  and  the  work  of  the  small 
elderly  gentleman  who  carried  a  little  bundle  tied 
in  a  red  bandana  handkerchief  appeared  in  the 
midst  of  the  sober  and  dry  effusions  of  our  Puri 
tan  literature,  and  of  an  eager  and  energetic  life 
still  engrossed  with  the  subjection  of  a  continent 
and  the  establishment  of  a  new  nation.  It  was 
the  work  of  a  young  man  of  twenty-six,  who  lived 
fifty  years  afterwards  with  constantly  increasing 
fame,  making  many  and  admirable  contributions 
to  literature.  But  nothing  that  followed  sur 
passed  the  joyous  brilliancy  and  gay  felicity  of 
his  first  book,  which  was  at  once  acknowledged  as 
the  wittiest  book  that  America  had  produced. 

Knickerbocker's  History  is  a  prolonged  and  elab 
orate  and  audacious  burlesque  of  the  early  an 
nals  of  New  Amsterdam.  The  undaunted  Goth 


258  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

of  the  legend  who  plucked  the  Roman  senator  by 
the  beard  was  not  a  more  ruthless  iconoclast  than 
this  son  of  New  Amsterdam,  who  drew  its  grave 
ancestors  from  venerable  obscurity  by  flooding 
them  with  the  cheerful  light  of  blameless  fun.  To 
pass  the  vague  and  venerable  traditions  of  the  aus 
tere  and  heroic  founders  of  the  city  through  the 
alembic  of  a  youth's  hilarious  creative  humor,  and 
to  turn  them  out  in  forms  resistlessly  grotesque, 
but  with  their  identity  unimpaired,  was  a  stroke 
as  daring  as  it  was  successful.  But  the  skill  and 
power  with  which  this  is  done  can  be  best  appre 
ciated  by  those  who  are  most  familiar  with  the 
history  which  the  gleeful  genius  burlesques. 

Irving  follows  the  actual  story  closely,  and  the 
characters  that  he  develops  faithfully,  although 
with  rollicking  caricature,  are  historical.  Indeed, 
the  fidelity  is  so  absolute  that  the  fiction  is  welded 
with  the  fact.  The  days  of  the  Dutch  ascendency 
in  New  York  are  inextricably  associated  with  this 
ludicrous  narrative.  It  is  impossible  not  to  think 
of  the  forefathers  of  New  Amsterdam  as  Knicker 
bocker  describes  them.  The  Wouter  Van  Twil- 
ler,  the  Wilhemus  Kieft,  the  Peter  Stuyvesant, 
who  are  familiarly  and  popularly  known,  are  not 
themselves,  but  the  figures  drawn  by  Diedrich 
Knickerbocker.  In  comical  despair,  the  historian 
Grahame,  whose  Colonial  History  is  still  among 


WASHINGTON  IRVING  259 

the  best,  says  of  Knickerbocker:  "If  Sancho  Panza 
bad  been  a  real  governor,  misrepresented  by  the 
wit  of  Cervantes,  his  future  historian  would  have 
found  it  no  easy  matter  to  bespeak  a  grave  atten 
tion  to  the  annals  of  his  administration." 

The  gayety  of  this  blithe  genius  bursting  in 
upon  our  staid  literature  is  irresistible.  Irving's 
temperament,  his  travels,  his  humor,  gave  him  a 
cosmopolitan  point  of  view ;  and  his  little  native 
city,  with  its  local  sense  of  importance,  and  its 
droll  aristocratic  traditions  springing  from  Dutch 
burgomasters  and  traders,  impressed  his  merry 
genius  like  a  complacent  Cranford  or  Tarascon 
taking  itself  with  a  provincial  seriousness,  which, 
to  his  sympathetic  fancy,  was  an  exhaustless  foun 
tain  of  fun.  Part  of  the  fun  to  us,  and  perhaps 
to  Irving,  was  the  indignation  with  which  it  was 
received  by  the  descendants  of  the  Dutch  families 
in  the  city  and  State.  The  excited  drawing-rooms 
denounced  it  as  scandalous  satire  and  ridicule. 
Even  Irving's  friend,  Gulian  Yerplanck,  nine  years 
afterwards,  deepening  the  comedy  of  his  remark 
by  his  evident  unconsciousness  of  the  drollery  of 
his  gravity,  grieved  that  the  author's  exuberance 
of  genuine  humor  should  be  wasted  on  a  coarse 
caricature.  Irving,  who  was  then  in  Europe,  saw 
Yerplanck's  strictures  just  as  he  had  written  Hip 
Van  Winkle,  and  he  wrote  to  a  friend  at  home 


260  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

that  he  could  not  help  laughing  at  Verplanck's  out 
burst  of  filial  feeling  for  his  ancestors,  adding,  in 
the  true  Knickerbocker  vein,  "  Eemember  me 
heartily  to  him,  and  tell  him  that  I  mean  to  grow 
wiser  and  better  and  older  every  day,  and  to  lay 
the  castigation  he  has  given  seriously  to  heart." 

The  success  of  Knickerbocker's  History  was  im 
mediate,  and  it  was  the  first  American  work  of  lit 
erature  which  arrested  attention  in  Europe. 

Sir  Walter  Scott,  who  was  then  the  most  famous 
of  English  poets,  and  was  about  to  publish  the  first 
of  the  Waverley  Novels,  was  delighted  with  a  hu 
mor  which  he  thought  recalled  Swift's,  and  a  sen 
timent  that  seemed  to  him  as  tender  as  Sterne's. 
He  wrote  a  generous  acknowledgment  to  the 
American  friend  who  had  sent  him  the  book,  and 
in  later  years  he  welcomed  Diedrich  Knicker 
bocker  at  Abbotsford,  and  the  American  has  given 
a  charming  and  vivid  picture  of  Scott's  home  and 
its  master. 

But  the  success  of  his  book  did  not  at  once  de 
termine  Irving's  choice  of  a  career.  He  was  still 
a  gilded  youth  who  enjoyed  the  gay  idleness  of 
society,  and  who  found  in  writing  only  another 
and  pleasant  recreation.  He  had  been  bred  in  the 
conservative  tradition  which  looked  upon  liveli 
hood  by  literature  as  the  deliberate  choice  of  Grub 
Street,  and  the  wretchedness  of  Goldsmith  as  the 


WASHING TO.V  IRVING  261 

necessary  and  natural  fate  of  authors;  but  it  is 
droll  that,  although  he  recoiled  from  the  uncer 
tainty  of  support  by  literary  labor,  he  was  willing 
to  try  the  very  doubtful  chances  of  office-holding 
as  a  means  of  securing  leisure  for  literary  pursuits. 
He  offered  himself  as  a  candidate  for  appointment 
as  the  clerk  of  a  court  in  the  city.  By  tradition  and 
sympathy  he  was  a  Federalist,  but  he  had  taken  no 
active  part  in  politics,  and  his  chance  was  slight. 
He  went  to  Albany,  however,  and  in  a  lively  let 
ter  he  paints  a  familiar  picture  of  the  crowd  of 
office-hunters  who,  he  says,  "  like  a  cloud  of  lo 
custs,  have  descended  upon  the  city  to  devour 
every  plant  and  herb  and  every  green  thing."  He 
was  sick  with  a  cold,  and  stifled  in  rooms  heated  by 
stoves,  and  was  utterly  disgusted,  as  he  says,  "  by 
the  servility  and  duplicity  and  rascality  I  have  wit 
nessed  among  the  swarms  of  scrub  politicians  who 
crawl  about  the  great  metropolis  of  our  State  like 
so  many  vermin  about  the  head  of  the  body  poli 
tic." 

Again  the  good  old  times  were  apparently  very 
much  like  the  good  new  times.  Thirty-nine  years 
after  Irving's  discomfiture  in  trying  to  get  a  pub 
lic  office,  Hawthorne  was  turned  out  of  one  that  he 
held,  and  wrote  to  a  friend :  "  It  seems  to  me  that 
an  inoffensive  man  of  letters,  having  obtained  a 
pitiful  little  office  on  no  other  plea  than  his  pitiful 


262  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

little  literature,  ought  not  to  be  left  at  the  mercy  of 
these  thick-skulled  and  no-hearted  ruffians."  The 
language  is  strong,  but  the  epithets  are  singularly 
well-chosen.  The  distinctive  qualities  of  the  ring 
leaders,  whether  of  high  or  low  degree,  in  the 
degradation  of  public  trusts  into  private  and  party 
spoils,  have  never  been  more  accurately  or  effec 
tively  described  than  by  the  words"  thick-skulled" 
and  "  no-hearted." 

The  story  of  the  sturdy  beggar  who  asked  Gen 
eral  Jackson  to  give  him  the  mission  to  France, 
and  finally  carne  down  to  a  request  for  an  old  coat, 
well  illustrates  a  system  which  regards  public  office 
not  as  a  public  trust,  but  as  private  alms.  The  ser 
vice  of  the  State,  whether  military  or  civil,  is  an 
object  of  high  and  generous  ambition,  because  it 
involves  the  leadership  of  men.  But  if  Irving  and 
Hawthorne  thought  that  what  is  called  office-seek 
ing  is  disgusting,  it  was  not  because  the  public  ser 
vice  is  not  noble  and  dignified,  but  because  we 
choose  to  allow  it  to  be  so  often  dependent,  not 
upon  fitness  and  character,  but  upon  the  personal 
or  political  favor  of  the  "  thick-skulled  "  and  "  no- 
hearted." 

But  the  problem  of  a  career  was  soon  solved. 
In  the  year  1810  Irving  formed  a  business  con 
nection  with  two  of  his  brothers,  and  the  next  five 
years  were  passed  in  New  York,  Philadelphia,  and 


WASHINGTON  IRVING  263 

"Washington,  forming  various  literary  plans,  look 
ing  out  for  his  business  interests,  sparkling  in 
society ;  and  when  war  with  England  began,  serv 
ing  upon  the  governor's  military  staff  as  Colonel 
Washington  Irving.  In  the  spring  of  1815  he  sailed 
to  roam  again  through  Europe,  but  the  illness  of 
his  brother  compelled  him  to  remain  in  England 
in  charge  of  the  business.  "  London,"  as  a  shrewd 
and  celebrated  American  recently  said,  "  was  then 
as  it  is  now,  the  social  centre  of  the  world."  Irving 
saw  famous  men  and  women,  and  his  charming 
sweetness  and  humor  opened  all  doors  and  hearts. 
But  the  business  fell  into  distress,  then  into  disas 
ter,  and  in  the  beginning  of  1818  the  house  failed. 
He  was  now  thrown  wholly  upon  his  literary  re 
sources,  which  did  not  fail,  and  in  the  spring  of 
1819,  when  he  was  thirty-six  years  old,  the  first 
number  of  the  Sketch  Book  was  issued  in  New 
York. 

The  merry,  exuberant,  satirical  Diedrich  Knick 
erbocker  was  transformed  into  the  genial,  urbane, 
and  tender-hearted  Geoffrey  Crayon.  Our  fathers 
and  grandfathers  knew  him  well.  They  had  been, 
bred  upon  Addison  and  Goldsmith,  the  essayists 
and  the  poets  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  in 
Geoffrey  Crayon  they  recognized  and  welcomed 
another  member  of  that  delightful  literary  soci 
ety.  He  was  all  the  more  wejcome  that  be  was 

UNIVERSITY 


264  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

an  American — one  of  themselves.  The  bland  and 
courteous  Geoffrey,  indeed,  had  few  rivals  among 
his  countrymen.  In  our  little  American  world 
of  letters  at  that  time  he  came  and  conquered. 
Bryant's  "  Thanatopsis,"  had  been  published  only 
two  years  before;  Halleck's  and  Drake's  lively 
but  strictly  local  "  Croakers "  were  still  appear 
ing,  and  Edward  Everett  had  just  hailed  Percival's 
first  volume  as  authorizing  great  expectations. 

But  prophecy  is  always  dangerous.  The  year 
before,  Sydney  Smith  had  said,  in  the  Edinburgh 
JReview,  "Literature  the  Americans  have  none — 
no  native  literature  we  mean.  It  is  all  imported. 
They  had  a  Franklin,  indeed,  and  may  afford  to 
live  half  a  century  on  his  fame.  There  is,  or  was, 
a  Mr.  Dwight,  who  wrote  some  poems,  and  his 
baptismal  name  was  Timothy.  There  is  also  a 
small  account  of  Virginia  by  Jefferson,  and  an 
epic  poem  by  Mr.  Joel  Barlow,  and  some  pieces 
of  pleasantry  by  Mr.  Irving.  But  why  should 
Americans  write  books,  when  a  six  weeks'  pas 
sage  brings  them,  in  their  own  tongue,  our  sense, 
science,  and  genius,  on  bales  and  hogsheads  ? 
Prairies,  steamboats,  grist-mills  are  their  natural 
objects  for  centuries  to  come.  Then,  when  they 
have  got  to  the  Pacific  Ocean,  epic  poems,  plays, 
pleasures  of  memory,  and  all  the  elegant  gratifica 
tions  of  an  ancient  people  who  have  tamed  the 


WASHINGTON  IRVING  265 

wild  earth,  and  sat  down  to  amuse  themselves. 
This  is  the  natural  march  of  human  affairs." 
As  the  sarcastic  Yorkshire  canon,  sitting  on  the 
Edinburgh  Olympus,  wiped  his  pen,  the  /Sketch 
Book  was  published.  The  good  canon  was  right 
as  to  our  small  literary  product,  but  even  an  Ed 
inburgh  Review  could  not  wisely  play  the  prophet. 
This  Mr.  Everett  also  discovered,  for  his  "great 
expectations"  of  Percival  were  not  fulfilled.  A 
desponding  student  of  our  poetry  recently  sighs 
that  Percival  is  a  forgotten  poet,  and  then,  seizing 
a  promiscuous  assortment  of  names,  exclaims  that 
Charles  Sprague,  William  "Wirt,  Washington  Irv 
ing,  and  Jack  Downing  may  be  referred  to  as 
forgotten  authors.  But  this  is  the  luxury  of  woe. 
Why  should  not  Percival  be  a  forgotten  poet? 
That  is  to  say,  what  is  there  in  the  verse  of  Per 
cival  that  should  command  interest  and  attention 
to-day  ?  He  was  a  remarkably  accomplished  man 
and  a  most  excellent  gentleman,  and  his  name  is 
very  familiar  in  the  reading  -  books  of  the  time 
when  grandfathers  of  to-day  were  going  to  school. 
But  he  was  a  noted  poet  not  because  he  took  rank 
with  his  contemporaries  —  with  Byron  and  Scott 
and  Keats  and  Shelley  and  Coleridge  and  Words 
worth — but  because  there  were  very  few  Ameri 
cans  who  wrote  verses,  and  our  fathers  patrioti 
cally  stood  by  them. 


266  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

Yet  because  the  note  of  a  singer  of  another  day 
is  not  heard  by  us,  it  does  not  follow  that  he  did 
not  touch  the  heart  of  his  time.  Grenville  Mel- 
len  is  a  forgotten  poet  also,  and  Rufus  Dawes  and 
John  Neal  and  James  Gr.  Eastburn.  If  the  gentle 
reader  will  turn  to  the  pages  of  Kettell,  or  any 
early  American  anthology,  he  will  seem  to  him 
self  to  be  walking  among  tombs.  Upon  each  page 
might  be  suitably  inscribed,  "  Sacred  to  the  mem 
ory  "  of  almost  every  one  of  the  singers.  But  can 
we  say  with  honest  reproach,  "  forgotten  poets  "  ? 
The  loiterer  in  the  wood  hears  the  song  of  the 
wood-thrush,  but  is  the  hermit-bird  wronged,  or  is 
his  song  less  sweet,  because  it  is  not  echoed  round 
the  world?  Is  Fame  to  be  held  responsible  for 
not  retaining  the  name  of  every  minstrel  who  loi 
ters  by  and  touches  his  harp  lightly,  and  sings  a 
sweet  song  as  he  passes  on  ?  Is  it  a  hard  fate  to 
give  pleasure  to  those  who  listen  because  those  out 
of  hearing  do  not  applaud  ? 

Many  an  author  may  have  a  tone  and  a  touch 
which  please  the  ear  and  taste  of  his  own  day,  and 
which,  as  characteristic  of  a  time,  may  be  only  cu 
rious  to  a  later  taste,  like  the  costumes  and  dances 
of  our  great-grandmothers.  But  young  America, 
sauntering  at  the  club  and  at  Newport,  would  not 
willingly  wear  the  boots  of  Beau  Nash,  nor  even 
the  cloak  of  Beau  Brummel.  The  law  which  pro- 


WASHINGTON  IRVING  267 

vides  that  nothing  shall  be  lost  is  equally  observa 
ble  in  the  realm  of  literary  fame.  Is  anything  of 
literature  lost  that  deserves  longer  remembrance? 
or,  more  properly,  can  it  be  lost  ?  A  fair  answer 
to  the  question  can  be  found  in  the  reply  to  an 
other,  whether  delving  in  Kettell,  or  in  any  other 
anthology,  reveals  treasures  dropped  by  Fame  as 
precious  as  those  she  carries. 

There  are  two  wa}rs  in  which  authors  survive : 
one  by  the  constant  reading  of  his  works,  the 
other  by  his  name.  Is  Milton  a  forgotten  au 
thor  ?  But  how  much  is  he  read,  compared  with 
the  contemporary  singers  ?  Is  Plato  forgotten  ? 
Yet  how  many  know  him  except  by  name  ?  Irving 
thus  far  holds  both.  Time,  like  a  thrifty  husband 
man,  winnows  its  wheat,  blowing  away  much 
chaff,  but  the  golden  grain  remains.  This  is  true 
not  only  of  the  whole  multitude  of  authors,  but  of 
the  works  of  each  author.  How  many  of  them 
really  survive  in  the  anthology  only?  Astoria 
and  Captain  Bonnemlle  and  Mahomet  and  other 
books  of  Irving  will  disappear;  but  Knicker 
bocker  and  Rip  Van  Winkle  still  buffet  the  re 
lentless  wave  of  oblivion,  and  their  buoyancy  is 
undiminished. 

As  for  Sprague — a  mild,  genial,  charming  gen 
tleman,  who  carried  his  simple  freshness  of  nature 
and  of  manner  to  the  end,  and  about  whose  vener- 


268  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

able  head  in  State  Street  always  shone  the  faint 
halo  of  early  poetic  renown  —  his  literary  talent 
was  essentially  for  a  day,  not  for  all  time.  But 
what  then  ?  On  Christmas  Eve  we  hear  the  pass 
ing  music  in  the  street  that  supplies  for  us  the 
song  of  the  waits.  Distant  and  melodious,  it  pen 
sively  recalls  the  days  and  the  faces  and  the  voices 
that  are  no  more.  But  the  singers  are  not  the 
same  waits  that  we  heard  long  ago ;  still  less  are 
they  those  that  the  youth  of  a  century  ago  heard 
with  the  same  musing  melancholy.  But  the 
substance  of  the  song,  and  the  emotion  which 
it  awakens,  and  the  tender  pathos  of  association 
— these  are  all  the  same.  Sprague  was  a  wait  of 
yesterday,  of  last  year,  of  fifty  years  ago.  Others 
sing  in  the  street  the  song  that  he  sang,  and,  sing 
ing,  they  pass  on,  and  the  sweet  strain  grows 
fainter,  softer,  and  fainter  and  fainter,  and  the 
echoes  answer,  "Dying,  dying,  dying,"  and  it  is 
gone. 

See  how  tenderly  Mr.  Stedman  speaks  of  the 
troubadours  who  are  singing  for  us  now,  whose 
names  are  familiar,  who  trill  and  twitter  in  the 
magazines,  and  in  tasteful  and  delicate  volumes, 
which  seem  to  tempt  the  stream  of  time  to  suf 
fer  such  light  and  graceful  barks  to  slip  along 
unnoted  to  future  ages.  But  the  kindly  critic's 
tone  forecasts  the  fate  of  the  sparkling  ventures. 


WASHINGTON  IRVING  269 

Moore  tells  us  of  the  Indian  maids  upon  the  banks 
of  the  Ganges  who  light  a  tiny  taper,  and,  on  a 
frail  little  chip,  set  it  afloat  upon  the  river.  It 
twinkles  and  dwindles,  and  flashes  and  expires. 
Mr.  Stedman  watches  the  minor  poets  trimming 
their  tapers  and  carefully  launching  their  chips 
upon  the  brimming  river.  "  Pleasant  journey," 
he  cries  cheerily  from  the  shore,  as  if  he  were 
speaking  to  hearty  Captain  Cook  going  up  the 
side  of  his  great  ship,  and  shaking  out  his  mighty 
canvas  to  circumnavigate  the  globe.  "  Pleasant 
journey,"  cries  the  cheery  critic  ;  but  there  is  a 
wistful  something  in  his  tone  that  betrays  a  con 
sciousness  of  the  swift  extinction  of  the  pretty 
perfumed  flickering  flame. 

So  scant,  indeed,  was  the  blossom  of  our  liter 
ature  when  the  Sketch  Book  was  published,  that 
even  twenty  years  later,  when  Emerson  described 
the  college  Commencement  Day  as  the  only 
tribute  of  a  country  too  busy  to  give  to  letters 
any  more,  Geoffrey  Crayon,  with  the  exception 
of  Cooper,  had  really  no  American  competitors. 
Long  afterwards  I  met  Mr.  Irving  one  morning  at 
the  office  of  Mr.  Putnam,  his  publisher,  and  in  his 
cordial  way,  with  a  twinkle  in  his  eye,  and  in  his 
pleasant  husky  voice,  he  said,  "  You  young  liter 
ary  fellows  to-day  have  a  harder  time  than  we  old 
fellows  had.  You  trip  over  each  other's  heels; 


270  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

there  are  so  many  of  you.  We  had  it  all  our  own 
way.  But  the  account  is  square,  for  you  can  make 
as  much  by  a  lecture  as  we  made  by  a  book." 
Then,  laughing  slyly,  he  added,  "  A  pretty  figure 
I  should  make  lecturing  in  this  voice."  Indeed, 
his  modesty  forbade  him  to  risk  that  voice  in  pub 
lic  addresses. 

Irving,  I  think,  made  but  one  speech.  It  was 
at  the  dinner  given  to  him  upon  his  return  from 
Europe  in  1832,  after  his  absence  of  seventeen 
years.  Like  other  distinguished  Americans  who 
have  felt  the  fascination  of  the  old  home  of  their 
ancestors,  and  who  have  not  thought  that  a  nar 
row  heart  and  a  barbaric  disdain  of  everything 
foreign  attested  the  truest  patriotism,  he  was  sus 
pected  of  some  alienation  from  his  country.  His 
speech  was  full  of  emotion,  and  his  protestation  of 
love  for  his  native  land  was  received  with  bound 
less  acclamation.  But  he  could  not  overcome  his 
aversion  to  speech-making.  When  Dickens  came, 
and  the  great  dinner  was  given  to  him  in  New 
York,  Irving  was  predestined  to  preside.  No 
body  else  could  be  even  mentioned.  He  was  him 
self  conscious  of  it,  and  was  filled  with  melancholy 
forebodings.  Professor  Felton,  of  Harvard,  com 
pared  Irving's  haunting  terror  and  dismay  at  the 
prospect  of  this  speech  to  that  of  Mr.  Pickwick  at 
the  prospect  of  leading  that  dreadful  horse  all  day. 


tJHIVEH 

WASHINGTON  IRVING^  271 


Poor  Irving  went  about  muttering,  "  I  shall  cer 
tainly  break  down.  I  know  I  shall  break  down." 
At  last  the  day,  the  hour,  and  the  very  moment 
itself  arrived,  and  he  rose  to  propose  the  health  of 
Dickens.  He  began  pleasantly  and  smoothly  in 
two  or  three  sentences,  then  hesitated,  stammered, 
smiled,  and  stopped  ;  tried  in  vain  to  begin  again, 
then  gracefully  gave  it  up,  announced  the  toast  — 
"  Charles  Dickens,  the  guest  of  the  nation  "  —  then 
sank  into  his  chair  amid  immense  applause,  whis 
pering  to  his  neighbor,  "  There,  I  told  you  I  should 
break  down,  and  I've  done  it." 

When  Thackeray  came,  Irving  consented  to  pre 
side  at  a  dinner  if  speeches  were  absolutely  forbid 
den.  The  condition  was  faithfully  observed,  but 
it  was  the  most  extraordinary  instance  of  Ameri 
can  self-command  on  record.  Whenever  two  or 
three  Americans  are  gathered  together,  somebody 
must  make  a  speech  ;  and  no  wonder,  because 
somebody  always  speaks  so  well.  The  custom  is 
now  so  confirmed  that  it  is  foolish  and  useless  to 
oppose  it. 

I  remember  a  few  years  since  that  a  dinner  was 
given  to  a  famous  American  artist  long  resident 
abroad,  and,  as  the  condition  of  the  attendance  of 
a  distinguished  guest  whose  presence  was  greatly 
desired,  the  same  agreement  was  made  that  Irving 
required  at  the  Thackeray  dinner.  It  was  a  com- 


272  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

pany  of  exceedingly  clever  and  brilliant  men,  but 
the  gayety  of  the  feast  was  extinguished  by  the 
general  consciousness  that  the  situation  was  abnor 
mal.  It  was  a  fruit  without  flavor,  a  flower  with 
out  fragrance,  a  symphony  without  melody,  a  din 
ner  without  speeches.  But  the  dinner  of  which  I 
speak,  when  the  condition  of  Irving's  presence  was 
that  there  should  be  no  speeches,  was  the  great  ex 
ception.  It  was  the  only  dinner  of  the  kind  that 
I  have  ever  known.  But  Irving's  cheery  anec 
dote  and  gayety,  the  songs  and  banter  of  the  com 
pany,  the  happy  chat  and  sparkling  wit,  took  the 
place  of  eloquence,  and  I  recall  no  dinner  more  de 
lightful. 

However  scant  was  our  literature  when  the 
Sketch  Book  appeared,  it  is  a  mistake  to  suppose 
that  Irving  owes  his  success  to  English  admiration. 
That  was,  undoubtedly,  very  agreeable  to  him  and 
to  his  countrymen.  But  it  is  well  to  correct  a  mis 
apprehension  which  is  still  cherished.  Many  years 
ago  an  English  critic  said  that  Irving  was  much  more 
relished  and  admired  in  England  than  in  his  own 
country,  and  added :  "  It  is  only  recently  critics  on 
the  lookout  for  a  literature  have  elevated  him  to 
his  proper  and  almost  more  than  his  proper  place. 
This  docility  to  English  guidance  in  the  case  of 
their  best,  or  almost  their  best,  prose  writer,  may 
perhaps  be  followed  by  a  similar  docility  in  the 


WASHINGTON  IRVIXG  2T3 

case  of  their  best,  or  almost  their  best,  poet,  Poe, 
whom  also  England  had  preceded  the  United 
States  in  recognizing."  This  comical  patron  is  all 
the  more  amusing  from  his  comparative  estimate 
of  Poe. 

If  it  were  true  that  Irving's  countrymen  had 
not  recognized  and  honored  him  from  the  first,  it 
might  be  suspected  that  it  was  because  they  were 
descendants  of  the  people  who  showed  little  con 
temporaneous  appreciation  of  Shakespeare.  But 
it  is  certainly  creditable  to  the  literary  England 
which  was  busy  idolizing  Scott  and  Byron,  that 
it  recognized  also  the  charming  genius  of  Irving, 
and  that  Leslie,  the  painter,  could  truly  write  of 
him,  "  Geoffrey  Crayon  is  the  most  fashionable 
fellow  of  the  day." 

But  while  the  English  appreciation  of  Irving  is 
very  creditable  to  England,  English  conceit  must 
not  go  so  far  as  to  suppose  that  it  was  that  apprecia 
tion  which  commended  him  to  his  own  country 
men.  At  the  time  when  Sydney  Smith  wrote  the 
article  from  which  we  have  quoted  there  was  ap 
parently  an  almost  literary  sterility  in  this  country, 
and  the  professional  critics  of  the  critical  journals 
were,  as  Professor  Lounsbury  says  in  his  admi 
rable  Life  of  Cooper,  undoubtedly  greatly  affected 
by  English  opinion.  But  there  was  an  American 
reading  public  independent  of  the  few  literary 

18 


274  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

periodicals,  as  was  shown  when  Cooper's  Spy  was 
published  at  the  end  of  1821,  the  year  in  which 
Bryant's  first  volume  of  poems  and  Dana's  Idle  Man 
appeared.  Cooper  had  published  his  Precaution 
in  1819,  a  book  which  Professor  Lounsbury  is  one 
of  the  very  few  men  who  are  known  to  have  read. 
He  was  an  unknown  author.  But  the  Spy  was  in 
stantly  successful.  Some  of  the  timid  English  jour 
nals  awaited  the  English  opinion,  for  Murray  had 
declined,  upon  Gifford's  advice,  to  publish  the 
book.  But  a  publisher  was  found,  and  England  and 
Europe  followed  America  in  their  approval.  Coop 
er  always  said,  and  truly,  that  it  was  to  his  country 
men  alone  that  he  owed  his  first  success,  and  his 
biographer  concedes  that  the  success  of  the  Spy 
was  determined  before  the  opinion  of  Europe  was 
known. 

Nearly  three  years  before,  in  May,  1819,  the  first 
number  of  Irving's  Sketch  Book  was  published. 
He  sent  the  manuscript  to  his  brother,  who  had  re 
gretted  Irving's  refusal  of  a  government  place  in 
the  Navy  Board,  and  to  whom  he  wrote,  "My  tal 
ents  are  merely  literary,  and  all  my  habits  of  think 
ing,  reading,  etc.,  have  been  in  a  different  direction 
from  that  required  for  the  active  politician.  .  .  . 
In  fact,  I  consider  myself  at  present  as  making  a 
literary  experiment,  in  the  course  of  which  I  only 
care  to  be  kept  in  bread  and  cheese.  Should  it 


WASHING  TON  IR  VINO  275 

not  succeed — should  my  writings  not  acquire  criti 
cal  applause — I  am  content  to  throw  up  the  pen, 
and  that  to  any  commonplace  employment.  But 
if  they  should  succeed,  it  would  repay  me  for  a 
world  of  care  and  privation  to  be  placed  among 
the  established  authors  of  my  country,  and  to  win 
the  affection  of  my  countrymen." 

The  first  number  of  the  Sketch  Book  was  pub 
lished  simultaneously  in  New  York,  Boston,  Phil 
adelphia,  and  Baltimore.  Its  success  was  imme 
diate.  In  September,  1819,  Irving  wrote :  "  The 
manner  in  which  the  work  has  been  received,  and 
the  eulogiums  that  have  been  passed  upon  it  in 
the  American  papers  and  periodical  works,  have 
quite  overwhelmed  me.  ...  I  feel  almost  appalled 
by  such  success."  The  echo  of  the  acclamation 
reached  England.  Murray  at  first  declined  to  pub 
lish  it,  as  he  had  at  first  declined  Cooper's  Spy. 
But  when  England  ascertained  that  the  American 
judgment  was  correct,  and  that  it  was  a  popular 
work,  Murray  was  willing  to  publish  it. 

The  delightful  genius  which  his  country  had 
recognized  with  joy  it  never  ceased  proudly  and 
tenderly  to  honor.  When,  in  1832,  he  returned 
to  his  native  land,  as  his  latest  biographer,  Mr. 
"Warner,  records,  "America  greeted  her  most  fa 
mous  literary  man  with  a  spontaneous  outburst  of 
love  and  admiration."  It  was  in  his  own  country 


276  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

that  lie  had  published  his  works.  It  was  his  own 
countrymen  whose  applause  apprised  England  of 
the  charm  of  the  new  author;  and  it  is  a  humor 
ous  mentor  who  now  teaches  us  that  it  was  our 
happy  docility  to  English  guidance  which  enabled 
us  to  recognize  and  honor  him. 

Was  it  docility  to  the  same  beneficent  guidance 
which  enabled  us  to  perceive  the  genius  of  Car- 
]yle,  whose  works  we  first  collected,  and  taught 
England  to  read  and  admire?  Did  it  enable  us, 
also,  to  inform  England  that  in  Robert  Browning 
she  had  another  poet?  Was  it  the  same  docility 
which  enabled  us  to  reveal  to  England  one  of  her 
most  philosophic  observers  in  Herbert  Spencer, 
and  to  offer  to  Darwin  his  most  appreciative  cor 
respondents  and  interpreters  in  Chauncey  Wright, 
John  Fiske,  and  Professors  Gray  and  Wyman  ? 
There  are  many  offences  to  be  scored  against  us, 
but  failure  to  know  our  own  literary  genius  is  riot 
one  of  them. 

Indeed,  there  is  not  one  great  literary  fame  in 
America  that  was  not  first  recognized  here.  Not 
to  one  of  them  has  docility  to  English  literary 
opinion  conducted  us,  as  is  often  believed.  Bry 
ant  and  Cooper  and  Irving,  Bancroft  and  Pres- 
cott  and  Motley,  Emerson  and  Channing,  Long 
fellow,  Hawthorne,  Lowell,  Whittier,  and  Holmes 
were  authors  whom  we  were  content  to  admire 


WASHINGTON  IR YING  377 

and  love  without  knowing  or  asking  whether  Eng 
land  had  heard  of  them,  or  what  she  thought  of 
them.  The  "greatness"  of  Poe  England  may 
have  preceded  us  in  recognizing.  That  is  an  as 
sertion  which  we  are  not  disposed  to  dispute. 
But  Walter  Scott  was  not  more  immediately  pop 
ular  and  beloved  in  England  than  was  Washington 
Irving  in  America;  and  American  guidance  led 
England  to  Scott  quite  as  much  as  English  guid 
ance  drew  America  to  Irving. 

The  first  number  of  the  Sketch  Book  contained 
the  tale  of  Rip  Van  Winkle,  one  of  the  most 
charming  and  suggestive  of  legends,  whose  hero 
is  an  exceedingly  pathetic  creation.  It  is,  indeed, 
a  mere  sketch,  a  hint,  a  suggestion  ;  but  the  imag-j 
ination  readily  completes  it.  It  is  the  more  rej 
markable  and  interesting  because,  although  the 
first  American  literary  creation,  it  is  not  in  the 
least  characteristic  of  American  life,  but,  on  the 
contrary,  is  a  quiet  and  delicate  satire  upon  it. 
The  kindly  vagabond  asserts  the  charm  of  loiter 
ing  idleness  in  the  sweet  leisure  of  woods  and 
fields  against  the  characteristic  American  excite-^ 
ment  of  the  overflowing  crowd  and  crushing  com 
petition  of  the  city,  its  tremendous  energy  and 
incessant  devotion  to  money-getting.  ( 

It  is  not  necessary  to  defend  poor  Rip,  or  to 
justify  the  morality  of  his  example.  It  is  the  im- 


278  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

agination  that  interprets  him ;  and  how  soothing 
to  those  who  give  their  lives  to  the  furious  accu 
mulation  of  the  means  of  living  to  behold  that 
figure  stretched  by  the  brook,  or  finding  nuts  with 
the  children,  or  sauntering  homeward  at  sunset ! 
Later  figures  of  our  literature  allure  us — Hester 
Prynne,  wrapped  in  her  cloak  of  Versus,  the  Scar 
let  Letter,  Hosea  Biglow,  Evangeline,  Uncle 
Tom,  and  Topsy — but  the  charm  of  this  figure  is 
unfading.  The  new  writers  introduce  us  to  their 
worlds,  and  with  pleasure  we  make  the  acquaint 
ance  of  new  friends.  The  new  standards  of  an 
other  literary  spirit  are  raised,  a  fresh  literary  im 
pulse  surrounds  us ;  but  it  is  not  thunder  that  we 
hear  in  the  Kaatskills  on  a  still  summer  afternoon 
— it  is  the  distant  game  of  Hen d rick  Hudson  and 
his  men ;  and  on  the  shore  of  our  river,  rattling 
and  roaring  with  the  frenzied  haste  and  endless  ac 
tivity  of  prosperous  industry,  still  Kip  Yan  Win-| 
kle  lounges  idly  by,  an  unwasted  figure  of  the  im-i 
agination,  the  constant  and  unconscious  satirist  of  U 
American  life. 

He  seems  to  me  peculiarly  congenial  with  the 
temperament  of  Irving.  He,  too,  was  essentially 
a  loiterer.  He  had  the  same  freshness  of  sympa 
thy,  the  same  gentleness  of  nature,  the  same  taste 
for  leisure  and  repose.  His  genius  was  reminis 
cent,  and,  as  with  all  humorists,  its  climate  was 


WASHINGTON  IRVING  279 

that  of  April.  The  sun  and  the  shower  chased 
each  other.  Irving's  intellectual  habit  was  emo 
tional  rather  than  thoughtful.  In  politics  and 
public  affairs  he  took  no  part,  although  office  was 
often  urged  upon  him,  as  when  the  friends  of 
General  Jackson  wished  him  to  go  as  representa 
tive  to  Congress,  or  President  Yan  Buren  offered 
him  the  secretaryship  of  the  navy,  or  Tammany 
Hall,  in  ]^ew  York,  unanimously  and  vocifer 
ously  nominated  him  for  mayor,  an  incident  in 
the  later  annals  of  the  city  which  transcends  the 
most  humorous  touch  in  Knickerbockers  History. 
He  was  appointed  secretary  of  legation  in  Eng 
land  in  1829,  and  in  1842,  when  Daniel  Webster 
was  secretary  of  state,  minister  to  Spain. 

But  what  we  call  practical  politics  was  always 
distasteful  to  him.  The  spirit  which  I  once  heard 
laugh  at  a  young  man  new  in  politics  because  he 
treated  "the  boys"  with  his  own  good  cigars  in 
stead  of  buying  bad  ones  at  the  saloon— the  spirit 
which  I  once  heard  assure  a  man  of  public  ability 
and  fitness  that  he  could  never  reach  political  of 
fice  unless  he  pushed  himself,  and  paid  agents  to 
buy  votes,  because  no  man  could  expect  an  office 
to  be  handed  to  him.  on  a  gold  plate — the  spirit 
which,  to  my  knowledge,  displayed  a  handful  of 
bank-notes  in  the  anteroom  of  a  legislature,  and 

O  ? 

exclaimed,  "That's  what  makes  the  laws!" — this 


280  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

was  a  spirit  which,  like  other  honorable  men  and 
patriotic  Americans,  Irving  despised. 

He  was  a  gentleman  of  manly  feeling  and  of 
moral  refinement,  who  had  had  glimpses  of  what 
is  called  "the  inside"  of  politics;  and,  as  he  be 
lieved  these  qualities  would  make  participation  in 
politics  uncomfortable,  he  abstained.  To  those  of 
us  who  are  wiser  than  he,  who  know  that  simple 
honesty  and  public  spirit  and  self-respect  and  con 
tempt  of  sneaking  and  fawning  and  bribery  and 
crawling  are  the  conditions  of  political  prefer 
ment,  Irving,  in  not  perceiving  this,  must  natu 
rally  seem  to  be  a  queer,  wrong-headed,  and  rather 
super-celestial  American,  who  had  lived  too  much 
in  the  heated  atmosphere  of  European  aristocra 
cies  and  altogether  too  little  in  the  pure  and  brac 
ing  air  of  American  ward  politics  and  caucuses  and 
conventions.  To  use  an  old  New  York  phrase,  Irv 
ing  preferred  to  stroll  and  fish  and  chat  with  Rip 
Yan  Winkle  rather  than  to  "run  wid  der  machine." 

The  Sketch  Book  made  Irving  famous,  and  with 
its  predecessor,  Knickerbocker,  and  its  successor, 
Bracebridge  Hall,  disclosed  the  essential  quality 
of  his  genius.  But  all  these  books  performed  an 
other  and  greater  service  than  that  of  winning  the 
world  to  read  an  American  book:  this  was  the 
restoration  of  a  kindlier  feeling  between  the  two 
countries  which,  by  all  ties,  should  be  the  two 


WASHINGTON  IRVING  281 

most  friendly  countries  on  the  globe.  The  books 
were  written  when  onr  old  bitterness  of  feeling 
against  England  had  been  renewed  by  the  later 
war.  In  the  thirty  years  since  the  Revolution 
ended  we  had  patriotically  fostered  the  quarrel 
with  John  Bull.  Our  domestic  politics  had  turned 
largely  upon  that  feeling,  and  the  game  of  French 
and  English  was  played  almost  as  fiercely  upon  our 
side  of  the  ocean  as  upon  their  own. 

The  great  epoch  of  our  extraordinary  material 
development  and  prosperity  had  not  opened,  and, 
even  had  John  Bull  been  friendlier  than  he  was, 
it  would  have  been  the  very  flattery  of  falsehood 
had  he  complimented  our  literature,  our  science, 
our  art.  Sydney  Smith's  question,  "  Who  reads 
an  American  book  ?"  was  contemptuous  and  exas 
perating.  But  here  was  an  American  who  wrote 
books  which  John  Bull  was  delighted  to  read,  and 
was  compelled  to  confess  that  they  depicted  the 
most  characteristic  and  attractive  aspects  of  his 
own  life  with  more  delicate  grace  than  that  of 
any  living  Englishman. 

It  was  Irving  who  recalled  the  old  English 
Christmas.  It  was  his  cordial  and  picturesque 
description  of  the  great  holiday  of  Christendom 
which  preceded  and  stimulated  Dickens's  Christ 
mas  Carols  and  Thackeray's  Holiday  Tales.  It 
was  the  genial  spirit  of  Christmas,  native  to  his 


282  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

gentle  heart  and  his  happy  temperament,  which 
made  Irving,  as  Thackeray  called  him,  a  peace 
maker  between  the  mother-country  and  her  proud 
and  sensitive  offspring  of  the  West.  He  showed 
John  Bull  that  England  is  ours  as  well  as  his. 

"  Old  fellow,"  he  said,  "you  cannot  help  }Tour- 
self.  It  is  the  same  blood  that  flows  in  our  veins, 
the  same  language  that  we  speak,  the  same  tradi 
tions  that  we  cherish.  If  you  love  liberty,  so  do 
we ;  if  you  will  see  fair  play,  so  will  we.  It  is 
natural  to  you,  so  it  is  to  us.  We  cannot  escape 
our  blood.  Shakespeare  is  not  your  poet  more 
than  ours.  If  your  ancestors  danced  round  the 
Maypole,  so  did  our  ancestors  in  your  ancestors' 
shoes.  If  Old  England  cherished  Christmas  and 
New  England  did  not,  Bradford  and  Endicott  and 
Cotton  were  Englishmen,  not  Americans.  If  old 
English  life  and  customs  and  traditions  are  dear 
to  you,  listen  to  my  story,  and  judge  whether  they 
are  less  dear  to  us."  Then,  with  a  merry  smile, 
the  voting  stranger  holds  out  his  hand  to  John 

t/  O 

Bull,  and  exclaims,  "  Behold,  here  is  my  arm  !  I 
bare  it  before  your  eyes,  and  here  it  is — it  is  the 
strawberry-mark ;  come  to  my  bosom,  I  am  your 
long-lost  brother." 

It  was  an  incalculable  service  which  Irving  ren 
dered  in  renewing  a  common  feeling  between 
England  and  America.  It  was  involuntary,  be- 


WASHINGTON  IRVISO  283 

cause  in  writing  he  had  no  such  purpose.  lie  was 
only  following  the  bent  of  his  own  taste,  and  his 
works  reflected  only  his  individual  sympathies. 
But  it  was  this  very  fact — it  was  the  English  in 
stinct  in  the  American,  the  appreciation  native  in 
the  heart  of  the  Western  stranger  of  the  true  po 
etic  charm  of  England — which  was  the  spell  of  the 
magician.  Irving  had  the  same  imaginative  en 
thusiasm  for  traditional  and  poetic  England  that 
Burke  had  for  political  England.  Indeed,  it  is 
an  England  which  never  actually  existed  except 
in  the  English  and  American  imagination.  The 
coarse,  mercenary,  material  England  which  Lecky 
photographs  in  his  history  of  the  eighteenth  cen 
tury  was  the  same  England  in  which  Burke  lived, 
and  which  his  glowing  imagination  exalted  into 

Z5  fj  O 

the  magnificent  image  of  constitutional  liberty  be 
fore  which  he  bowed  his  great  head.  So  with  the 
old  England  that  Irving  drew.  He  saw  with  po 
etic  fancy  a  rural  Arcadia,  and  reproduced  the 
vision  with  airy  grace  and  called  it  England.  Ko 
wonder  that  John  Bull  was  delighted  with  an  ar 
tist  who  could  paint  so  fascinating  a  picture,  and 
write  under  it  John  Bull's  portrait. 

To  change  a  word  in  Marvell's  noble  lines,  when 
Irving  was  in  England 

"  He  nothing  common  saw  or  mean 
Upon  that  memorable  scene." 


284  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

Only  an  American  could  have  seen  England  as  he 
described  it,  and  invested  it  with  an  enchantment 
which  the  mass  of  Englishmen  had  neither  sus 
pected  nor  perceived.  Irving's  instinct  was  that 
of  Hawthorne  afterwards,  who  called  England 
"  Our  Old  Home."  There  is  a  foolish  American 
habit  growing  patriotically  out  of  our  old  conten 
tions  with  England,  and  politically  out  of  our  de 
sire  to  conciliate  the  Irish  vote  in  this  country,  of 
branding  as  servile  and  un-American  the  natural 
susceptibility  of  people  of  English  descent,  but  na 
tives  of  another  land,  to  the  charm  of  their  ances 
tral  country.  But  the  American  is  greatly  to  be 
pitied  who  thinks  to  prove  the  purity  of  his  patri 
otism  by  flouting  the  land  in  which  he  has  a  legiti 
mate  right,  the  land  of  Alfred  and  Runnymede, 
of  Chaucer  and  Shakespeare  and  Milton,  of  Hamp- 
den  and  Cromwell,  of  Newton  and  Bunyan,  of  Som- 
ers  and  Chatham  and  Edmund  Burke,  the  cradle 
of  constitutional  liberty  and  parliamentary  govern 
ment.  If  the  great  body  of  the  literature  of  our  lan 
guage  in  which  we  delight,  if  the  sources  of  our  law 
and  politics,  if  the  great  exploits  of  contemporary 
scholarship  and  science,  are  largely  beyond  our  boun 
daries,  yet  are  legitimately  ours  as  well  as  all  that 
we  have  ourselves  achieved,  why  should  we  spurn 
any  of  our  just  and  hereditary  share  in  the  great 
English  traditions  of  civilization  and  freedom? 


WASHINGTON  IRVING  285 

Irving  returned  to  America  in  1832,  and  here 
be  afterwards  remained,  except  during  bis  absence 
as  minister  in  Spain.  In  an  earlier  visit  to  that 
country  be  bad  felt  the  spell  of  its  romantic  his 
tory,  and  had  written  the  Life  of  Columbus,  the 
Conquest  of  Granada,  and  the  Chronicles  of  the 
Alhambra.  During  all  his  later  years  be  was 
busy  with  bis  pen,  and,  while  the  modest  author 
bad  risen  to  the  chief  place  in  American  litera 
ture,  its  later  constellation  was  rising  into  the 
heavens. 

But  his  intrinsic  modesty  never  disappeared 
either  from  the  works  or  the  character  of  the  be 
nign  writer.  In  the  height  of  his  renown  there 
was  no  kind  of  presumption  or  conceit  in  his  sim 
ple  and  generous  breast.  Some  time  after  his  re 
turn  from  his  long  absence  in  Europe,  and  before 
Putnam  became  bis  publisher,  Irving  found  some 
disinclination  upon  the  part  of  publishers  to  issue 
new  editions  of  his  books,  and  be  expressed,  with 
entire  good  humor,  the  belief  that  he  had  bad  his 
day. 

It  is  doubtless  true,  as  Blackwood  remarked,  with 
what  we  may  call  Blackwood  courtesy,  when  Mr. 
Lowell  was  American  minister  in  England,  that 
Shakespeare,  Milton,  Dryden,  Addison,  Pope,  and 
so  many  more  "  will  not  be  replaced  by  Mr.  Wash 
ington  Irving  and  Mr.  Lowell."  But  it  is  equally 


286  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS' 

true  that,  since  Swift,  Blackwood  cannot  find  in 
English  literature  political  satire  more  trenchant, 
humorous,  forcible,  and  effective  than  the  Biglow 
Papers,  and  nothing  in  Swift  more  original.  It 
is  said  that  it  is  ludicrous  to  compare  the  mild  hu 
mor  of  Rip  Van  Winkle  with  the  "  robustious  fun 
of  Swift."  But  this  is  a  curious  "  derangement  of 
epitaphs."  Swift  has  wit,  and  satiric  power,  and 
burning  invective,  and  ribaldry,  and  caustic,  scorn 
ful  humor ;  but  fun,  in  any  just  sense,  he  has  not. 
He  is  too  fierce  to  be  funny.  The  tender  and  im 
aginative  play  of  Rip  Yan  Winkle  are  wholly  be 
yond  the  reach  of  Swift. 

Irving  and  other  American  writers  are  not  the 
rivals  of  their  British  associates  in  the  literature  of 
the  English  language — they  are  worthy  comrades. 
Wordsworth  and  Byron  are  not  Shakespeare  and 
Milton,  but  they  are  nevertheless  Wordsworth  and 
Byron,  and  their  place  is  secure.  So  the  brows 
of  Irving  and  Cooper,  of  Bryant  and  Longfellow, 
and  of  Lowell,  of  Emerson  and  Hawthorne  do  not 
crave  the  laurels  of  any  other  master.  The  per 
turbed  spirit  of  Blackwood  may  rest  in  the  con 
fident  assurance  that  no  generous  and  intelligent 
student  of  our  literature  admires  Gibbon  less  be 
cause  he  enjoys  Macaulay,  or  depreciates  Bacon  be 
cause  he  delights  in  Emerson,  or  denies  the  sting 
of  Gulliver  because  he  feels  the  light  touch  of 


WASHING  Toy  LRVLNG  287 

Knickerbocker.     It  is  with  good  fame  as  with  true 
love: 

"True  love  in  this  differs  from  gold  and  clay, 
That  to  divide  is  not  to  take  away." 

In  the  year  that  Irving  published  the  Sketch 
Book,  Cooper  published  his  first  novel,  and  two 
years  before  Bryant's  Thanatopsis  had  been  pub 
lished.  When,  forty  years  afterwards,  in  the  last 
year  of  his  life,  the  last  volume  of  the  Life  of 
Washington  was  issued,  Irving  and  Bryant  and 
Cooper  were  no  longer  the  solitary  chiefs  of  our 
literature.  An  illustrious  company  had  received 
the  torch  unextinguished  from  their  hands — 
Whittier,  Hawthorne,  Emerson,  Longfellow, 
Holmes,  Lowell,  Bancroft,  Prescott,  Motley, 
Parkman,  Mrs.  Stowe,  had  all  taken  their  places, 
yet  all  gladly  and  proudly  acknowledged  Irving 
as  the  patriarch.  It  is  our  happy  fortune  that 
these  names,  of  which  we  are  all  proud,  are  not 
those  of  men  of  letters  only,  but  of  typical  Amer 
ican  citizens.  The  old  traditions  of  the  literary  \ 
life,  the  mad  roystering,  the  dissipation,  Grub 
Street,  the  sponging-house,  the  bailiff,  the  garret, 
and  the  jail,  genius  that  fawns  for  place  and  flat 
ters  for  hire,  the  golden  talent  wrapped  in  a  nap 
kin,  and  often  a  dirty  and  ragged  napkin,  have 
vanished  in  our  American  annals  of  letters.  Pure, 


288  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

upright,  faithful,  industrious,  honorable,  and  hon 
ored,  there  is  scarcely  one  American  author  of  em- 
Jnence  who  may  not  be  counted  as  a  good  and 
useful  citizen  of  the  Eepublic  of  the  Union,  and  a 
shining  light  of  the  Republic  of  Letters. 

Of  Washington  Irving,  as  of  so  many  of  this  no 
ble  company,  it  is  especially  true  that  the  author 
was  the  man.  The  healthy  fun  and  merry  satire 
of  Diedrich  Knickerbocker,  the  sweet  humor  and 
quick  sympathy  and  simple  pathos  of  Geoffrey 
Crayon,  were  those  of  the  modest  master  of  Sun- 
^  nyside.  Every  literary  man  of  Irving's  time, 
whether  old  or  young,  had  nothing  but  affection 
ate  praise  of  his  artless  urbanity  and  exhaustless 
good-nature.  These  qualities  are  delightfully  re 
flected  in  Thackeray's  stories  of  him  in  the  Round 
about  Papers  upon  Irving  and  Macaulay,  "  the 
Goldsmith  and  the  Gibbon  of  our  time." 

"He  came  to  one  of  my  lectures  in  Washing- 
tori,"  Thackeray  says,  "and  the  retiring  President, 
Mr.  Fill  more,  and  his  successor,  Mr.  Pierce,  were 
present.  '  Two  kings  of  Brentford  smelling  at  one 
rose,'  said  Irving,  with  his  good-natured  smile. 
In  his  little  bower  of  a  home  at  Sunnyside  he  was 
always  accessible.  One  English  newspaper  man 
came  and  introduced  himself,  and  partook  of  lunch 
eon  with  the  f amity,  and,  while  the  host  fell  into  a 
little  doze,  as  was  his  habit,  the  wary  Englishman 


WASHINGTON  IRVING  289 

took  a  swift  inventory  of  everything  in  the  house, 
and  served  up  the  description  to  the  British  pub 
lic,  including  the  nap  of  his  entertainer.  At  an 
other  time,  Irving  said, '  Two  persons  came  to  me, 
and  one  held  me  in  conversation  while  the  other 
miscreant  took  my  portrait.' "  Thackeray  tells  these 
little  stories  with  admiring  sympathy.  His  manly 
heart  always  grew  tender  over  his  fellow-authors 
who  had  no  acrid  drop  in  their  humor,  and  Irv- 
ing's  was  as  sweet  as  dew. 

It  is  late  for  a  fresh  compliment  to  be  paid  to 
him,  but  the  London  Spectator  paid  it  in  1883,  the 
year  of  his  centenary,  by  saying,  "  Since  the  time 
of  Pope  more  than  one  hundred  essayists  have  at 
tempted  to  excel  or  to  equal  the  Tatler  and  Spec 
tator.  One  alone,  in  a  few  of  his  best  efforts,  may 
be  said  to  have  rivalled  them,  and  he  is  Washing 
ton  Irving."  The  Spectator  adds  that  one  has  sur 
passed  them,  "  the  incomparable  Elia." 

Irving's  temperament,  however,  was  much  more 
congenial  with  that  of  the  early  essayists  than 
Charles  Lamb's,  and  his  pictures  of  English  coun 
try  life  in  Bracebridge  Hall  have  just  the  delicate, 
imaginative  touch  of  the  sketches  of  Sir  Roger  de 
Coverley.  But  in  treating  distinctively  English 
topics,  however  airy  and  vivid  his  touch  may  be, 
Irving  is  manifestly  enthralled  by  his  admiration 
for  the  literary  masters  of  the  Anne  time,  and  by 

19 


290  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAJS 

the  spirit  of  their  writing.  It  is  in  the  Knicker 
bocker  world  that  he  is  characteristically  at  home. 
Indeed,  it  is  his  humorous  and  graphic  fancy 
more  than  the  sober  veracity  of  history  which  has 
given  popular  and  perpetual  form  to  the  early  life 
of  New  York,  and  it  is  Irving  who  has  enriched  it 
with  romantic  tradition  such  as  suffuses  the  story 
of  no  other  State. 

The  bay,  the  river,  the  city,  the  Kaatskill  Moun 
tains,  as  Choate  said  of  Faneuil  Hall  and  Webster, 
breathe  and  burn  of  him.  He  has  charmed  the 
Hudson  with  a  peculiar  spell.  The  quaint  life  of 
its  old  Dutch  villages,  the  droll  legend  of  Sleepy 
Hollow,  the  pathetic  fate  of  Rip  Yan  Winkle, 
the  drowsy  wisdom  of  Communipaw,  the  marvel 
lous  municipality  of  New  Amsterdam,  and  the 
Nose  of  Anthony  guarding  the  Highlands,  with 
the  myriad  sly  and  graphic  allusions  and  descrip 
tions  strewn  all  through  his  books,  have  made  the 
river  Irving's  river,  and  the  state  Irving's  state, 
and  the  city  Irving's  city,  so  that  the  first  instinc 
tive  question  of  every  lover  of  Irving  from  beyond 
the  state,  as  he  enters  Central  Park  and  beholds 
its  memorial  statues,  is,  "  Where  is  the  statue  of 
Irving?" 

Unhappily,  echo,  and  not  the  park  guide-book, 
answers.  There  is,  indeed,  a  bust,  and,  in  a  gen 
eral  sense,  "  Si  monumentum  "  may  serve  for  a  re- 


WASHINGTON  IH VINO  291 

ply.  From  that  point  of  view,  indeed,  "Westmin 
ster  Abbey,  as  the  monument  of  English  heroes 
in  letters  and  arms,  in  the  Church  and  the  State, 
would  be  superfluous.  But  the  abbey  is  a  shrine 
of  pilgrimage  because  of  the  very  fact  that  it  is 
the  burial-place  of  famous  Englishmen.  The  Cen 
tral  Park,  in  New  York,  is  already  a  Walhalla  of 
famous  men,  and  the  statue  that  would  first  sug 
gest  itself  as  peculiarly  fitting  for  the  Park  is  of 
the  New- Yorker  who  first  made  New  York  dis 
tinctively  famous  in  literature — the  New-Yorker 
whose  kindly  genius  first  made  American  litera 
ture  respected  by  the  world. 

Keversing  the  question,  "Where  be  the  bad 
people  buried  ?"  the  wondering  pilgrim  in  the  Park 
asks,  "Where  be  Irving  and  Bryant  and  Coop 
er  ?"  They  were  not  Americans  only,  but,  by  birth 
or  choice,  New-Yorkers,  and  the  three  distinctive 
figures  of  our  early  literature.  It  was  very  touch 
ing  to  see  the  venerable  Bryant,  in  the  soft  May 
sunshine,  when  the  statue  of  Halleck  was  unveiled, 
standing  with  bare  head  and  speaking  of  his  old 
friend  and  comrade.  But  who  that  listened  could 
not  see,  through  tender  mists  of  years,  the  grave  and 
reverend  form  of  the  speaker  himself,  transformed 
to  marble  or  bronze,  sitting  serene  forever  beneath 
the  shadowing  trees,  side  by  side  with  the  poet  of 
Faust  and  the  worshipper  of  Highland  Mary  ? 


292  LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS 

But  Bryant  would  have  been  the  first  to  name 
Washington  Irving  as  the  most  renowned  distinc 
tively  American  man  of  letters  whose  figure,  repro 
duced  characteristically  and  with  simple  quaint- 
ness,  should  decorate  the  Park.  To  a  statue  of 
"Washington  Irving  all  the  gates  should  open,  as 
every  heart  would  open,  in  welcome.  That  half- 
humorous  turn  of  the  head  and  almost  the  twink 
ling  eye,  that  brisk  and  jaunty  air,  that  springing 
step,  that  modest  and  gentle  and  benign  presence, 
all  these  could  be  suggested  by  the  artist,  and  in 
their  happy  combination  the  pleased  loiterer  would 
perceive  old  Diedrich  Knickerbocker  and  the  sum 
mer  dreamer  of  the  Hudson  legends,  the  charm 
ing  biographer  of  Columbus  and  of  Goldsmith,  the 
cheerful  gossip  of  Wolfert's  Roost,  and  the  mellow 
and  courteous  Geoffrey  Crayon,  who  first  taught 
incredulous  Europe  that  beyond  the  sea  there  were 
men  also,  and  that  at  last  all  the  world  must  read 
an  American  book. 

Irving  was  seventy-six  years  old  when  he  died, 
late  in  1859.  Born  in  the  year  in  which  the  Rev- 
lution  ended,  he  died  on  the  eve  of  the  civil  war. 
His  life  exactly  covered  the  period  during  which 
the  American  republic  was  an  experiment.  It 
ended  just  as  the  invincible  power  of  free  institu 
tions  was  to  be  finally  demonstrated.  His  life  had 
been  one  of  singular  happiness,  both  of  tempera- 


WASHINGTON  IRVING  293 

rnent  and  circumstance.  His  nature  was  too  sim 
ple  and  gentle  to  breed  rivalries  or  to  tolerate  ani 
mosities.  Through  the  sharpest  struggles  of  our 
politics  he  passed  without  bitterness  of  feeling 
and  with  universal  respect,  and  his  eyes  happily 
closed  before  seeing  a  civil  war  which,  although 
the  most  righteous  of  all  wars,  would  have  broken 
his  heart.  The  country  was  proud  of  him:  the 
older  authors  knew  in  him  not  a  rival,  but  a  friend, 
the  younger  loved  him  as  a  father.  Such  love,  I 
think,  is  better  than  fame.  On  the  day  of  his 
burial  in  the  ground  overlooking  the  Hudson  and 
the  valley  of  Sleepy  Hollow,  unable  to  reach  Tar- 
rytown  in  time  for  the  funeral,  I  came  down  the 
shore  of  the  river  which  he  loved  and  immortal 
ized.  As  the  train  hastened  and  wound  along,  I 
saw  the  Catskills  draped  in  autumnal  mist,  not 
concealing,  but  irradiating  them  with  lingering 
and  pathetic  splendor.  Far  away  towards  the 
south  the  river-bank  on  which  his  home  lay  was 
Sunnyside  still,  for  the  sky  was  cloudless  and  soft 
with  serene  sunshine.  I  could  not  but  remember 
his  last  words  to  me,  more  than  a  year  before, 
when  his  book  was  finished  and  his  health  was 
failing:  "  I  am  getting  ready  to  go ;  I  am  shutting 
up  my  doors  and  windows,"  and  I  could  not  but 
feel  that  they  were  all  open  now,  and  bright  with 
the  light  of  eternal  morning. 

:i  Y 
H* 


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